Dressed for success but it lacked polish
Trousers, shirt, tie and a little jumper.
Back to work gear on, I spent Friday night polishing my shoes, my match day comfies.
My wife Lisa said, “Please tell me you aren’t wearing them.”
I said: “I have to, it’s what I wear.”
The coaches on the continent have the style and now dress down for games, I’m a bit old school and it was just great to get ready for football again.
I do change my outfit from time to time but my shoes I stick with.
Waking up on Saturday morning, I was like a kid at Christmas, so excited but I wanted to be playing.
When I was a player, I didn’t appreciate days like yesterday. The start to a new season was just taken for granted.
I’m not one of those people who wish they could go back to the time they played but I don’t think players appreciate how much of a buzz football gives to so many people.
We take so much for granted, not just football but so many aspects of life, and the lockdown has altered much of that thinking for the better.
The life I knew as a footballer was about taking the games as they come, every one was just another match.
What has happened in the last few months has allowed us all to take a step back and appreciate what we actually get to do for a living.
It allows us to have a look at how we are living every young boy or girl’s dream and appreciate it.
That was my mindset yesterday as I prepared to head to Paisley for our Premiership opener against St Mirren.
I would have given my right arm to be back out there kicking a ball against the Buddies.
I had that first game of the season feeling but I was never like that as a player.
It was just a muscle memory thing, it was my job and that’s just what I did. It’s what you train all week to do and you knew you were fortunate to do that.
Now as a coach you miss that ability to influence a game on the pitch, especially when you lose like we did at St Mirren yesterday.
What you do is prepare players, ask them ‘Do know your job, your role and your own responsibility?’.
What can you do to help them? We will look back at this weekend in 20 years’ time and appreciate how significant it was after all we’ve been through.
But right now it’s just great to get the competitive juices flowing again.
This season is a bit of a step into the unknown. All of the Premiership clubs are the same, we want to get through the first months with as few bumps on the road as possible.
There’s no doubt the preparations for this campaign have been unique and we are all adapting to the processes we need to adhere to in order to get games played.
Hopefully it won’t be long before fans are back inside stadiums but for now we need to provide as entertaining a spectacle as we can.
That new season feeling won’t last forever, it’s down to the business of getting as many points as possible and then pushing on.
It’s full circle for me as Livingston manager as my first game in charge of the club was in Paisley on August 25th 2018. We won 2-0 and I was reminded of this by youngest son Zak who thought it was a bit spooky.
This time it ended in a disappointing defeat but I’d like to wish all the fans, players and managers all the best for the coming season.
I would have given my right arm to have been back out there kicking a ball against the Buddies