The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
TOUGH START FOR McLEISH AS SCOTLAND SUFFER DEFEAT
IRN-BRU Final: Caley Jags arrive at turning point as Robertson goes for glory again
John Robertson believes winning the IRN-BRU Cup in Perth today by beating Dumbarton could be the turning point required to kick-start Caley Thistle’s revival.
The Inverness manager is aiming to become the first man to win the competition twice with the same club, having led the Caley Jags to glory with a 2-0 victory against Airdrie in October 2003 during his first spell in charge.
Robertson takes his side back to McDiarmid Park, scene of that triumph of 15 years ago, and the Inverness boss senses an ideal opportunity to give the club’s long-suffering supporters reason to celebrate.
He said: “This is an important game for us in terms of the rebuilding we are doing on and off the pitch.
“The club has had two tough seasons. Obviously last season there was relegation and that is a huge hit for a club like us.
“We don’t have the resources of the likes of Hearts, Hibs, Rangers and Dundee United, who went down but could still call on big fanbases.
“That wasn’t the same for us. A lot of our crowd have lost interest and we are not getting the walk-up fans any more.
“All we have now are the hardcore support who are always there.
“We have new fans coming to the game, young fans who will be taken to a match for the first time.
“Hopefully they will see a wee bit of success and will want to continue supporting the club and maybe some of the ones who have drifted away but go on Saturday might be more inclined to come back.”
Caley Jags are eighth in the Championhip, just four points ahead of today’s opponents, and Robertson expects Steve Aitken’s Sons to show no fear in their own pursuit of cup glory.
Robertson, who is without the suspended defender Brad McKay and cup-tied striker Nathan Austin, added: “I have come up against Dumbarton in the past and have nothing but admiration for them. “They are a brilliantly run club in all aspects, on the pitch and off it.
“In Stevie Aitken they have a fanatstic manager who is destined to go fulltime eventually because he has done such a great job there.
“What they have done over the last four or five seasons as a parttime club in a full-time league has been remarkable.
“They will see this weekend as a huge opportunity to win a national trophy and rightly so.
“We know what level we will have to play at if we’re going to bring the cup back to Inverness.”
Coll Donaldson has set his sights on a second IRN-BRU Cup winner’s medal less than a year after almost walking away from football.
The Caley Thistle defender has revealed he almost called time on his football career following several failed attempts to win a new deal with another club following a miserable spell at Dundee United – despite winning this trophy last season.
Donaldson’s career was at a crossroads and he was ready to give up the game altogether until Inverness manager John Robertson offered him the chance to rebuild his career in the Highlands.
Now, as he prepares for a cup-final meeting with Dumbarton in Perth today, Donaldson insists Caley Jags have helped him fall in love with the beautiful game again.
He said: “Coming here has been a breath of fresh air because I am enjoying my football again. I was at the point where I didn’t know whether I wanted to play football before I left Dundee United. It was quite severe, I wasn’t enjoying it and there was no fun left in the game for me.
“I didn’t like going into work every day because I was unhappy. I wasn’t playing, I was working all week but there wasn’t anything at the end of it and it was pretty tough. No matter how well I played I never got a chance.
“My relationship with the fans at United also went downhill and when I spoke to the manager (Ray McKinnon) he told me he was keeping me out of the team to protect me a bit.
“When someone was injured he would look at me and think ‘what if it goes wrong’ because then things would become worse.
“So from that point of view, I was totally at a loss because I had a manager who said he believed in me but I was so low in confidence and so low in self-esteem that he couldn’t trust me.”
The unrest at Tannadice was palpable and Donaldson was not the only player to feel the brunt.
Win or lose, he bore the brunt of the fans’ ire and he was not alone.
He said: “At the start I just brushed aside the abuse I was getting, I was playing in the team and was able to ignore the stick from the fans.
“I’m not naive enough to think that people would love you and wouldn’t doubt you in football, but I was able to get through it when I was playing.
“There was one day I made a mistake to lose the opening goal but we came back to win 2-1 and the fans still gave me abuse for it.
“We had won the game but they still wanted to hammer me.
“It wasn’t just me, it’s toxic there.
“I saw it last weekend when we played them.
”They started the better of the teams but we got a corner after 15 minutes and they were all booing them.
“For us winning a corner, they started hammering their own players. I don’t envy any of the Dundee United players playing there because they are under massive pressure every week. It is quite a toxic atmosphere at that club.
“Even when you leave it’s the same. I am still pals with Robbie Muirhead who is down in England with MK Dons now and has done well for them.
“He still gets people tweeting him and giving him abuse for his time at Dundee United even though it was two years ago now.”
Donaldson knew he had to get away but finding a new club proved problematic until Inverness came calling last summer.
He said: “I doubted myself, I doubted whether I was able to play at this level even though I’d done it before.
“I came very close to giving up. I was in America in the summer as I go out to Virginia every summer to stay with Brian Welsh who was my youth coach at Livingston.
“I am close friends with his two boys so I go to see them and I spoke to him about it.
“He is having the time of his life coaching out there and he told me that I could move over and play part-time, do a bit of coaching.
“I genuinely wasn’t going to come home, I was just going to stay.
“But my only reason was I had signed a contract for another year so I felt I better give it a go.
“It didn’t work out though so I went to Poland for 12 days and the manager told me he wanted to sign me.
“But the chairwoman didn’t sign me because she thought it was rude I couldn’t speak Polish.
“I went to a few clubs in England, Stevenage and Morecambe, but things didn’t work out.”