Former boss Lee tipping Tommy to lead Killie on the Wright road to safety
The stakes may not have been quite so high back then.
But when Kilmarnock overturned a 1-0 first-leg deficit to beat Falkirk 4-0 in the Premiership play- off final five years ago, manager Lee Clark celebrated like Jose Mourinho did when Porto dumped Manchester United out of the Champions League in 2004.
Clark was simply relieved to keep Killie in the top tier and he has no doubts that Tommywright, a friend for more than 30 years, will emulate that feat.
They’re currently secondbottom, two points ahead of Hamilton and one behind Ross County.
Their final two fixtures – at home to St Mirren on Wednesday and away to Accies a week today – will shape their season. But Clark claims that the Ayrshire club is in safe hands.
“We were team- mates for a few years with Newcastle United and then, when I was assistant-manager to Glen Roeder at Norwich, Tommy joined the staff as our goalkeeping coach,” he recalled.
“We were neighbours then and our families became very close.
“Later on, when I was at Killie and we played St Johnstone, we’d arrive an hour or two before the players did so we could sit in each other’s offices, have a cup of tea and catch up with each other. I thought he was a brilliant appointment when he joined – he’s perfect for the club.
“The hardest thing for him right now is the first part, just keeping them in the division. If he can do that then he has the knowledge and the understanding of what’s required to go and repeat the success with Kilmarnock that he had with St Johnstone, taking them into Europe and maybe winning a trophy.
“He knows the type of players they require and his record shows that he’s well versed when it comes to recruitment. Once he clears this first hurdle, the club will go from strength to strength under him. Even if the worst comes to the worst and they’re involved in the play-offs, I’m sure Tommy and his players will have too much for whoever it is they happen to come up against.
“I’ve been following their games under him and I never thought that they’d be involved in all this drama.
Tommy brought in Kyle Lafferty, who was on fire. But then he got injured and they lost in the Scottish Cup to St Mirren and then got beat at Motherwell last weekend, which surprised me. “But I listened to what he said after that match and I have no doubt they’ll recover. I think they’ll win both of their remaining games, that would be enough to keep them up and then Tommy will really put his own stamp on the team next season.”
Clark didn’t admit it at the time but he was rocked by that defeat by Peter Houston’s Bairns in 2016.
“Of course it was a concern,” he said. “We’d been by far the better team but we still lost and we conceded an awful goal as well.
“You do worry, but you don’t let the players see that. Anyway, when we got them back to our place we turned in our best performance of that season.
“We scored two early goals and never looked back – we blew Falkirk away.
“I’d been lucky in a way, though, because we’d been isolated at the bottom for a while so knew fairly early on that we’d be in the play-offs.
“That gave me a few matches to plan for the play-offs and I took a look at some of our younger players. I handed Greg Taylor his debut and then put him in for the second leg of the final.
“Some of the lads from that team are still there. Gary Dicker is a great leader and Ror y Mckenzie is the fittest player I’ve ever worked with.
“Greg Kiltie scored twice against Falkirk and he would have played for Scotland by now if he hadn’t been so unlucky with injuries.
Fortunately, he’s only 24 and can still have a great future.”
Clark, who was thrown straight in at the deep end with African Champions League ties, is thinking more of title deeds than relegation battles these days after becoming manager of Omdurman- based Al-merrikh two months ago.
His new club and derby rivals Al- Hilal are scrapping it out for the Sudanese Premier League championship.
“We’re three points behind Al- Hilal – they’re just across the road, it’s like Dundee United and Dundee! – at the half- way stage and we have a game, which we’ll play on May 21,” he said.
“We’re in a mid-season training camp in Cairo at the moment, preparing for the next round of fixtures. We usually finish training at two o’clock in the morning because it’s Ramadan and I need to work round the players’ fasting. It’s a whole new experience and culture but I’m loving it.
“One of the reasons I came here was that Al-merrikh usually have 43,000 capacity crowds for home games but the pandemic has meant we’ve just started having a few thousand fans back in. I can’t wait to see our ground full.”