A Journeyman's Journey

[Dan McConnell]

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Hi, and thanks for clicking on my story. I have been an avid follower of as many stories as possible on this site over the last year or so and whilst my own may not have taken off so far, I'm determined to start as I mean to go on with this one. After varying degrees of success with other saves with the likes of the South African giants Kaizer Chiefs and un-posted success with Arsenal, I've decided I'm going to stick to one save and post as many updates as possible.

I'm currently at work so am unable to post any screenshots, but I'll give you a brief overview of what I'll be attempting. I will be starting my journey as realistically as possible, with no coaching badges and just Sunday League football playing history. I have started the game at the earliest opportunity, early pre-season in Brazil, which starts in November 2014 and will be job searching for the remainder of the 14/15 season across the world in the likes of China, South America, the USA, South Africa and many of the European leagues.

Just before I retired for the evening last night, I was lucky enough to be offered the Canadian Under-23's job in preparation for the qualification phase for the Olympics in 2016. I took the job, as many would, and saw it as a fantastic opportunity to start my managerial career in such a high profile competition such as the Olympic Games, albeit the qualification phase. Of course, screenshots of progress will commence this evening, as will a squad overview. If I remember rightly from London 2012, squads could name 3 players over the age of 23, which gives me the opportunity to call up the likes of Junior Hoilett, David Edgar and Simeon Jackson, 3 names relatively well known in England and the first 3 Canadians that spring to mind when thinking of Canadian football, to me anyway! I'll look into squad eligibility again this evening.

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[Dan McConnell]

Canada

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So, as earlier promised, here is some of my first few months as a manager.

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Here I am, dressed to impress, looking for a new job in the footballing world.

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Surprisingly, there are quite a few jobs available at the moment, but I won't be applying for any of them right now as I doubt very much I'd even be considered for any of them. This in mind, I went on holiday for a few months until the end of the English domestic season and started to apply for a few different jobs all over the world.

The first club to give me an interview were, surprisingly, a Chinese Super League club, Guangzhou Fuli. They had struggled so far in their league campaign. Of course, I attended.

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Unfortunately for me though, they decided to opt for a manager from their own country to try and change their fortunes around. I wasn't particularly saddened by this as I wasn't expecting much from that interview anyway, but it was a good experience.

A week or so later, I noticed on the job noticeboard that there were some more vacancies, this time in international football. I applied for the Mexican, Amercian and Canadian Under-23 sides vacancies and, to my surprise, without an interview, was offered the job with the Canadian Soccer Association.

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As mentioned before, I was more than happy to start showcasing my managerial talent on an international stage so took the job without any hesitation and would be looking forward to Olympic Games qualifiers later on in the year.​

 

[Dan McConnell]

Olympic Qualfiers (NAM)

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So, the time was soon upon me to name my first squad. Unfortunately, I had overlooked the fact I didn't have an assistant in place, therefore my entire first squad was based purely on attributes and was scouted by myself.

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There may well be a couple of familiar names in this squad with the likes of Doneil Henry of West Ham and Luca Gasporetto formally of Rangers in defence. One more player I had heard of was Cyle Larin of Orlando in the MLS (purely thanks to a visit to Orlando by myself in real life last year). The rest of the squad was made up of players under the age of 23 as I'm unable to select any over that age for qualifiers.

As you can see, my first 3 fixtures are also shown. We'll face Cuba, Panama and the USA. I'm hoping for victories against Cuba and Panama whilst expecting a much tougher match against the USA, but if we can finish second in this group then we will still qualify for the semi finals of the qualification stage.

Soon enough, it was time to select my team in my first ever game in management. I opted for an attacking 4-2-3-1 formation in the hope of creating plenty of chances whilst still remaining resolute at the back. Here is my first starting 11 on paper for the Cuba game.

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Strangely, the game was staged at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, USA. For those of you who don't know, this is a huge stadium, one far bigger than you would imagine a game of this magnitude would require. Anyway, that's besides the matter in hand, the match. How did we get on.....?

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Well, we dominated in truth. A fantastic way to begin my tenure in charge and I was ecstatic with the lads and their performances. Cuba did cause us problems but we remained compact at the back whilst fluid towards the top end of the pitch. Cuba did pull the game back to 2-1 in the first half with a cross come shot which somehow found it's way into the net but we were always in control. This management lark is easy....... I'm kidding, I know it's going to get a lot tougher in the very near future! One unfortunate bit of news was the injury to Jordan Hamilton right at the death which will keep him out for 2 months, really denting our chances. I'm hoping the rest of the strikers will be able to fill the void.

My second match in charge actually took place on my 22nd birthday against Panama. We topped the group after the first round of games so went into the game in a confident mood, despite only having 1 day to recover ahead of this one. I was still pretty confident we'd be strong enough to beat Panama even with a heavily rotated squad.

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Again, after only a day's rest, the starting 11 was rotated plus a slight change in formation was required to make sure those who were match fit were playing in familiar positions. Hopefully this won't upset the balance too much.

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We got lucky in the end, but I'll take a win all day long, especially as it keeps my managerial record pristine for another match at 100%. After falling behind early, the lads responded and Marco Dominguez scored an absolute worldie to get us to level terms at the break. I made a change with about 20 minutes to go and just 6 minutes later, the new super sub Ben Fisk put his name in lights in front of all 263 fans (in an 80,000 seater stadium again) and put us into the lead. The scoring was finished off in stoppage time when Daniel Stanese nodded in from close range to ensure our qualification was secured to the semi final stages.

Next up was a top of the table shootout between us and the USA, who topped the group on goal difference. I'm not expecting much as I think they have a far superior side, but if we can do as we have been doing which is defending well in the most part and creating opportunities, then of course we're in with a chance. We also had double the amount of recovery time for this match, a huge 2 days, so hopefully the lads won't be too shot ahead of this one.

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Coming into this one I decided to stick to the slightly unbalanced formation which did us good against Panama but changed a few of the personnel. Fisk earned himself a start after scoring what turned out to be the important goal last time out and Chris Manella started in midfield after his extremely impressive average rating of 8.25 from the first 2 games. The USA are strong though. With some names well known across Europe like Jonathan Brooks, Matt Miazga and LA Galaxy stalwart Brandon Jamieson, I'm expecting a much tougher test this time out.

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Unfortunately, we just couldn't match the quality of the USA team. Despite taking an early lead, we conceded 2 goals in 5 minutes around the half hour mark which turned the game on it's head and we were facing an uphill battle from there on in. The USA made it 4-1 which included a hat-rick for Rubio Rubin before we pulled it back to 4-2, but just moments later the 3 goal gap was restored and that's how it finished. Second in the group is what I expected though therefore I'm not too disappointed in this showing.

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After the USA match was the much anticipated draw for the semi finals. Mexico and Honduras qualified from group A, so I was hoping to avoid the Mexicans if possible.

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But of course, this is Football Manager and nothing comes easy. We're really going to have to play the match of our lives to get past the Mexicans who topped Group A with ease.​

 

[Dan McConnell]

Olympic Qualfiers (NAM)

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So, the time had come to face my biggest test in football management in just my fourth match, a semi final against Mexico. We were definitely the underdogs going into it but I feel if we could do the good things that we'd done in the group stages again and try to cut out the individual errors at the back that occurred against the USA that we'd be in with a real chance.

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The Mexico side is flooding with talent with the likes of former FM wonderkids Carlos Fierro and Erick Torres, as well as current FM wonderkid Hirving Lozano. We're really going to have out work cut out trying to control Fierro and Lozano and with Torres on the bench we could be in for a nasty shock should he enter the field. We changed our formation again slightly with a more attacking right sided midfielder in the hope to try and catch them on the counter.

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Unfortunately, the Mexicans were just too strong for us and we bowed out of the Olympic Qualifiers at the semi final stage. After a largely good first half, we kept the scoreline level going into the break, but in the second half the two aforementioned Mexican youngsters got on the score sheet and our dream was over pretty quickly. Mexico brought Torres on with around 10 minutes left and he rubbed salt in the wound with 2 minutes left to show what was in my opinion a harsh scoreline, but Mexico did deserve to progress to the final where they would meet the USA. We would be facing Honduras in the 3rd place play off.

Another piece of news was that I'd gotten myself an assistant manager, Oswald Adu agreed to help me out with the Under-23 side. Hopefully squad selections should be slightly easier in the future now.

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So, going into the 3rd Place Playoff, I decided to take a quick look at the reasons for playing this. It turned out to make very good reading. If we won this 3rd place playoff, we'd qualify for the Olympic Games Playoff, a match in which we'd still have a chance to make the coveted games. This changed a lot and of course it'll mean I'll be going all guns blazing against Honduras to have a chance of progressing.

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My optimism showed in my team selection and I told the lads I was expecting a better performance to give us a chance of making Rio.

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And what a fantastic result we managed to pull off, somehow. We went into the break a goal down but with 12 minutes left I decided to go for broke. We took off Chris Manella in midfield, dropped the wingers deeper and brought on Caleb Clarke and went 3 upfront and somehow it worked. Clarke scored within minutes of coming on and Ben Fisk worked his magic again, this time in the final minute of normal time to give us a memorable win which meant we'd be in the Olympic Games Playoff match. It did't take us long to find out who we'd be up against.

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We'll be facing Columbia. One game to decide who'll be going to 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Either Columbia, or us. Could we pull off another upset?​

 

[Dan McConnell]

Apologies, there will be a 2 legged affair against Columbia in March 2016 to see who goes to Rio!

 

[Dan McConnell]

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In the 5 months or so that followed that dramatic win over Honduras, I had some real thinking time about what I wanted to do next. After all, we were huge underdogs going into the Columbia game, and I felt as though I'd done a good job with this Canadian side, despite only playing 5 matches so far. The biggest factor in this thinking was money, unfortunately. I'd taken the Canadian job on a voluntary basis, therefore I wasn't being paid for this work. I decided that if an opportunity arose during this break through the winter I would consider leaving Canada to persue other challenges.

After applying for numerous jobs in club and international football, I was finally offered a job for some actual money! The Sudanese FA offered me £625 a week to take their national job. Glamorous I know. After some careful thinking and deliberation, I thanked the Sudanese FA for their extremely generous offer, particularly as I'd only managed 5 professional matches in my career, but declined the opportunity to become their national team manager. I wasn't convinced the side had what it took to challenge at the upcoming African Cup of Nations and didn't want to be humiliated at the hands of better nations.

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A few more weeks passed and I was starting to get impatient. I didn't bother with applying for professional clubs, just lower division clubs across the globe and didn't seem to be getting anywhere until an extremely interesting email popped up in my inbox.

Jamaica were looking for a new boss, and I was the man they wanted. A man with no coaching badges or professional playing experience and managed just 5 professional matches was wanted by a nation the size of Jamaica. I had no hesitation and put my application in as soon as possible and within 24 hours I was the new boss! A nation with some more than talented footballers, Jamaica was to become my new home. I also had some very welcome news, a weekly wage, and a handsome one that that!? £1500 per week to take home.

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My next updates will be tomorrow where we look at who's to come for The Reggae Boyz and whether we can get off to a good start in our first game which will be against Haiti in March.
​

 

[Dan McConnell]

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After taking the Jamaica job, I had a couple of months to see who and what I had at my disposal. Of course, I was no longer restricted to picking players under the age of 23, therefore I had full access to the talent at Jamaica's disposal for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers.


January and February passed with me watching a few matches with Jamaican interest when I named my first squad based on my assistants recommendation (forgot to get a screenshot sorry!) and we'd be facing Haiti and Costa Rica in World Cup qualifier group matches. One player I accidentally overlooked was Birmingham's Clayton Donaldson, a player my assistant wasn't keen on for this squad. As a Blues fan in real life, I am more than aware of Clayton's destructive power and will be choosing him for upcoming internationals as he already has 12 goals at Blues this season in game and can really give us another dimension.

My starting 11 was as follows for my first match in charge of the Reggae Boyz.

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I opted to stick to my preferred 4-2-3-1 formation with Dwight Gayle upfront on his own but with plenty of support in midfield coming from Jason Puncheon and Michail Antonio.

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What a wonderful way to start my tenure in charge of the Jamaican national team! We got an more than convincing 4-1 victory in Haiti thanks to goals from Gayle, Puncheon and two for Gayle. As much as I'd raved about Donaldson beforehand, it's going to be very difficult to overlook Gayle after his performance in this match!

Our next game was another qualifier, this time against Costa Rica. We stuck to the same formation for this game, just changed a few of the personel due to tiredness.

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This was a good chance to show what we could do against a better opposition with stellar names like Bryan Ruiz and Joel Campbell. The Costa Rican's also had a very impressive World Cup in Brazil 2014, therefore I knew it was going to be a very tough match.

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And so it proved. We lost the match 1-0 thanks to a goal for John Ruiz.

All the while, I had been applying for jobs across the globe in club football too. I made an error by accidentally applying for another national team job in Cameroon. I turned this down as I was looking forward to taking charge of Jamaica at the upcoming commemarative Copa America in the USA.

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Next up will be the squad announcement for the Copa America in the USA, as well as a pre-tournament friendly against Peru.​

 

[Dan McConnell]

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After my first 2 matches in charge I decided there would be a couple of changes to the side selected for the Copa America. I decided to call up the aforementioned 32 year old Clayton Donaldson to challenge Dwight Gayle at the top of the pitch. He had just completed an exemplary season at Birmingham, finishing the campaign with 19 goals to his name, bettering his previous season's total by 3.

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We had to drop 3 lads from the original 26 named to keep in line with Copa America rules, these 3 were Lovel Palmer, Darren Mattocks and O'Brian Woodbine. Unfortunately they just didn't show enough to me in the pre-tournement training camp to earn a place in the squad which was the reason they were dropped.

Our one and only pre-tournament friendly was to be played against Peru. A dangerous side, they have some players well known across the European circuit with the likes of Jefferson Farfan and Andre Carillo so we'll have to be careful when taking them on.

The starting line ups were as follows;

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I went with Donaldson ahead of Gayle up top who'll provide a lot more physical presence at the top end of the pitch, and with Puncheon and Antonio backing up again I felt we had a good chance to cause Peru problems when we were in possession. Also Darren Pratley in midfield would hopefully provide the calming influence with his good passing ability and steely tackling nature, in turn hopefully winning and retaining possession for us.

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What a fantastic performance. We took the lead just before the quarter of an hour mark thanks to Leon Bailey and despite being pegged back before the break, my man Clayton scored his first international goal 16 minutes before the end to give us a morale boosting victory ahead of the Copa America. I was very pleased with the endeavour shown and the fight to go on and win the match despite it just being a friendly. I was particularly made up for Donaldson who, at the age of 32, was really showing his ability and he would really have a big part to play at the tournament as we try to show a few people who'd written us off up.

We gave the lads the next day off to recover from the game before the real work started ahead of the Copa.

Coming up next......

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We'll preview Jamaica's group as well as show the results of the group stages.
​

 

[Dan McConnell]

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So the time has come to play in the Copa America again. In the competiton's centenary year, an extra tournament has been organised in the USA with a few extra sides invited to play, us being one of them. Here is an overview of the group stages and who'll be playing who.

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We've been placed in group B as the 4th seeds alongside Bolivia, the mighty Brazil and Ecuador. I see this as a similar group to the one I faced in Olympic qualifying back in 2015 with Canada, with 2 average sides and a much better one, world class this time. If we could get 2 wins from this group I'd be delighted, even one win and a draw would be good, I don't anticipate getting anything in our final group game against Brazil.

First up we'll be facing Bolivia at the world renowned Rose Bowl in Pasadena. A bumper crowd of 92000 fans crammed into the stadium for our opening group game and we were hoping for a good result.

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We started with Gayle upfront, despite Donaldson's dominant performance against Peru, I felt a fox in the box striker was needed against what I thought would be a relatively poor defence. Jevaughan Watson took his place in midfield ahead of Daniel Johnson also. This was purely based on fitness, Johnson had just completed a long campaign with Preston and was not fully fit ahead of this one, he'll more than likely get his chance against either Ecuador or Brazil.

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We got off to a fantastic start with Antonio getting on the score sheet early with a good header from a corner. Our tails were up then and we dominated the first half. Just before the break we doubled our lead thanks to a Kevaughan Frater goal. We came back out for the second half and played with the same intensity for the whole 90 minutes. This was epitimised in the 65th minute when Shaun Cummings, the right back remember, popped up and scored the 3rd. We held our lead until the end and were fully deserving of the large margin of victory against a poor Bolivia side. There was one piece of bad news which came out of this game though. Michail Antonio went off injured in the second half and would miss the final 2 group games, a huge loss considering his goals early in my tenure with Jamaica.

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So after one game, we somehow and rather surprisingly topped group B ahead of Brazil on goal difference. It was a fantastic start to the tournament for us and we went into the Ecuador game full of confidence and hoping to pull off an upset.

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So, the next game, as mentioned before, would be against Ecuador where we hoped to put in another strong performance and try to pave our way through to the knockout stages of this Copa America, something nobody ever thought possible outside of the camp before the tournament, but with this side, anything's possible!

Next up....

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[Dan McConnell]

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Our second group game was against Ecuador. After a convincing win in the first game, we entered this match in buoyant mood. We tinkered with the personel again slightly ahead of this one, mainly due to injuries and fitness. Donaldson started upfront and Garath Macleary replaced the injured Antonio on the right hand side on midfield.

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We were back in Pasadena for this one and won the toss meaning we wore our home shirts again avoiding a colour clash. I told the lads to go and play with the freedom they played with against Bolivia and with a bit of luck, who knows, we might just come away with a result of some kind putting us in a commanding position going into the Brazil match.

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Unfortunately, we just didn't turn up to this one. Ecuador found us on an extremely bad off day and too full advantage with goals from Govea, former Manchester City striker Felipe Caicedo and Bolanos with Michael Hector putting one into his own net too completing the rout. It was a poor performance which knocked us down to 3rd in the table after 2 games meaning we faced an uphill task in trying to get some kind of result against Brazil in the final group match.

I wasn't too optimistic heading into the tournament anyway but after a performance of this level I was disappointed because we'd let ourselves down after such a brilliant result in the first game.

As mentioned before, our final group game would be against 5 time world champions Brazil.

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No pressure....​

 

[Dan McConnell]

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So the time had come to face the might of Brazil, again in Pasadena. Another 92000 fans had flocked to the stadium for the game meaning inside and out of the stadium was awash with colour hours before the kick off, there really was a carnival atmosphere in the air.

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In our temporary American home, our final group match was moments away and we announced our starting line up alongside the Brazilian one.

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We stuck with Clayton upfront but brought back Simon Dawkins and Daniel Johnson to the starting line up in midfield to try and add a slightly more defensive mind as I imagine we will be under pressure for the vast majority of the 90 minutes.

So, we got underway and here's how we got on....

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There aren't many words that can follow a result, sorry no, a humiliation like this. Okay we scored a couple against Brazil, that's no mean feat considering the quality of their defence, but to crumble as pathetically as we did in the second half was unforgivable. Skipper Wes Morgan had a torrid time and ended up putting it into his own net twice, Neymar helped himself to a couple and Gabriel Barbosa and Willian also got themselves on the score sheet. Donaldson got one back to take it to 6-2 which was bad enough, then Luan came off the bench for the Samba Boys. He was in outstanding form and got himself 4 goals in 20 minutes as we looked to have given up.

Of course this is clearly by far the worst result I'd experienced as a manager so far, but let's be honest, I wasn't expecting much against a side with the quality of Brazil. It inevitably knocked us out of the Copa America as Ecuador managed a win against Bolivia to knock them out also.

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We managed a credible 3 points but were poor in the final 2 group matches meaning we failed to make it out of Group B and went back home to Kingston.

The next time I'll have the squad back together will be later on in the year in World Cup qualifiers so we'll keep an eye on the lads as most of their domestic seasons' begin around Europe.

Next up are World Cup qualifiers.

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[Dan McConnell]

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The Copa America was a sobering experience for us. After the optimism shown beforehand and the brilliant victory in our opening game, our true level was shown against Ecuador and even more so Brazil. We just weren't good enough, pure and simple.

Mexico ran out winners of the tournament and the FA gave me a frank and honest review of our campaign.

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The FA seemed to be happy with failure. I can't decide whether the FA were expecting us to do badly and just wanted us to go to the World Cup or they thought we'd been unlucky to be drawn in a group with Brazil.

After this, I decided I was going to start applying for club jobs again and see where it got me.

After a week or so, I was invited to an interview with Brora Rangers in Scotland, a little club in the far north of Scotland.

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I flew to Glasgow and drove up to Brora for the interview with chariman Alisdair Robertson and it seemed to go pretty well. I had organised a hotel stay for a week back in Glasgow so drove back to the second Scottish city afterwards and checked in for my stay.

After just 3 days, I received an email from Alisdair and it made for very interesting reading.

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I had been offered my first club job in football in the Scottish League 2. It would mean a big cut in pay and the facilities would be pretty dire, but when it comes to club football, I doubt very much I'll be able to get much better. Without much hesitation I decided to accept the offer and, with a heavy heart, resign as manager of Jamaica.

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I followed my heart and took the miniscule Brora Rangers job and was now the proud manager of a Scottish Football League 2 club. The club are still semi pro so it's going to be a difficult task to get players in to help with retaining the league place.

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As you can see, the trophy cabinet is as good as bare. The club's stadium is Dudgeon Park and holds around 4000, the vast majority of that standing.

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I was extremely excited at my first opportunity in club management and would be diving straight into the deep end with not a lot of funds to play with, but this is part of the fun of managing at lower league clubs!

Tonight I'll post an update of the current squad, my targets going forward and the pre season round up.

Thanks for reading as always.

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[FMSaddler96]

Really enjoying this so far. I thought you would've been able to get slightly higher up than that with your 2 good stints in Canada and Jamaica but good luck with Brora! Looking forward to seeing how it goes

 

[Dan McConnell]

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So, as promised, here is an overview of the squad when I took over.

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There are of course a few players greyed out, but hopefully once I get a backroom team in which will consist of (hopefully) an assistant manager, a coach, a physio and 2 scouts, we'll be able to assess in a bit more detail what, and more importantly who we are dealing with and can hopefully plan a little better ahead of the new season.

The only player that sticks out before any games have been played is Stephen O'Neill with his average rating of 7.34 over the last 5 games. It seems he has a bit about him therefore I'll more than likely be looking to see if we can find anyone willing to join us who'll compliment his style of play.


The day I was officially unveiled was the beginning of pre-season for Brora, so I was quite literally just through the door when we played our first game. The rest of pre-season went like this.

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We played 5 games, 4 of which were under my stewardship. The only loss of pre-season was against Ross County before I arrived, plus I wasn't too worried as Ross County are a much bigger side than us so I'm sure they weren't expecting much at the time.

I took over on the day of the match against Wick Academy which we won 1-0 thanks to a Stephen O'Neill goal. We drew our next 2 matches against Edinburgh Uni and Turiff Utd and won the final game of pre-season against Craigroyston thanks to a hat-rick from Andrew Allan.

Preparation complete, we headed into the competitive season with a brand new assistant manager.

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29 year old Ian Rumsby agreed to become my assistant and I finally had some more in depth reports of the players we had at our disposal. I was now also able to ask him for reports on other players too, so I'm expecting a few signings in the near future also.

So the fixture list for the new season is as follows;

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We're going into the season in an optimistic mood after a more than decent pre-season. Hopefully we can get off to a good start with a couple of cup games before the league campaign gets underway.

​

 

[Dan McConnell]

Thanks a lot mate, I was hoping for something a little better too but why not 'Start from the bottom' as my favourite music artist Drake says

Really enjoying this so far. I thought you would've been able to get slightly higher up than that with your 2 good stints in Canada and Jamaica but good luck with Brora! Looking forward to seeing how it goes

 

[Dan McConnell]

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Before my first competitive match in charge of Brora, we had another piece of welcome news.

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Liam McJannet had agreed to join the club as the new chief scout and would provide me with monthly reports on the best talent suited to our level of football.

Next though was the moment I'd been waiting for since joining the club. My first match in charge of Brora was a Scottish Challenge Cup tie against Raith Rovers. There's no easy starts in football and this match proved it. Raith were well established in the Championship and actually won this competition back in 2014 so had pedigree. It promised to be a tough game but one I knew would be a good experience for my lads.

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I wasn't expecting much as we hadn't yet signed anybody and had just 13 senior players ahead of it, so had to name some amateur regens amongst the subs. Here's how we got on;

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Now, we may well have just had an absolute stormer of a game, or this may actually be our level. I'm opting with the former for now, but what a way to start. We were desperately unlucky to lose our only senior striker Colin Maclean and influential winger Stephen O'Neill to injury in the first half and after bringing the two regen kids on we didn't play that badly at all. We pushed Raith right to the death and in what I would say was a relatively even game which neither side deserved to lose, Raith got lucky.

Unfortunately, the result obviously meant we'd been knocked out of the Challenge Cup, but there was a small sweetener to go with this as we picked up a little bonus.

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Not a lot, but every little helps in lower league football.

From now on I'll be updating monthly in a little less detail to help the story move along at a slightly quicker pace. If there are any suggestions please post them as I'd love to make the story more enjoyable for all. Thanks as always for reading ​

 

[Dan McConnell]

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We only played one more game in July, this time in the Scottish League Cup, but my, what a big game it was. We had been drawn away against the mighty Rangers. A fallen giant in the very recent past, they have dominated the lower leagues over the past 3 years and got themselves back into the Scottish Premiership at the earliest opportunity.

Before the Rangers match, there was some sad news for central defender Colin McGowan. He suffered a broken leg in training and would miss the vast majority if not all of the 16/17 season.

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This left me with a dilemma. Do I get another defender in, maybe on loan, to fill the void, or do I see how we get on for the first few matches? I'll more than likely go with the former, but we'll look at that after the Rangers match.

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This was our time to travel to the world famous Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow.

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Now of course, this was Rangers we were talking about, so I told the lads before the game that we were huge underdogs and just to give it their best shot. I gave a couple of the new signings, Ryan Miller and our new Portuguese protoge Rodrigo Almeida their debuts too. Greg Kerr was another new signing but only made the bench as I looked to pack the midfield against what is of course, a much stronger Rangers side.

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And so it proved. As predicted, Rangers proved too strong for us at Ibrox, although we did put up an admirable fight and for an hour we kept the door shut. In the 52nd minute, John Pickles picked up his second yellow card on the game and in a flash the game tuned. Unfortunately, Josh Windass unlocked our defence 8 minutes later before Jaime Pinto then scored on his debut to make it 2. Windass got his second of the day with moments left which gave the scoreline a bloated look in favour of Rangers. We certainly didn't deserve a 3-0 defeat and if the game was won of effort alone we'd have stormed though but unfortunately for us Rangers were just too strong and had too much quality.

Again though, there was a bonus despite crashing out of the cup, money!

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A very welcome and healthy £12.24k added to the coffers. Hopefully we'll see a little bit of that prize money invested in the playing squad before the new season starts.

We also had some new backroom staff that had been welcomed in before the Rangers game. Physio Jack Blackett, former Brora player and now scout Steve Mackay plus new coach Craig Allison all joined to help out with training/player reporting.

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So July ends with some slight optimism with a hint of disappointment due to the Raith game. If we can perform like we did against the Championship side, and for the opening hour against Rangers, in our league campaign then there's no reason why we can't upset the odds and do well in our first season back in the Scottish Football League. The campaign gets underway in a week's time away to Peterhead.
​

 

[Dan McConnell]

August 2016

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The league campaign was quickly upon us so let's have a quick look at the Scottish League 2 Preview.

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I knew full well when I took on the Brora job that we would be written off from the word go, but after 2 relatively encouraging performances against sides in higher divisions than us, I'm quietly confident we can upset the apple cart this year and do better than expected. I think 2000/1 is a little harsh on the lads and I won't let them forget that. We want to prove people wrong this year.

On a personal note, I asked the board if they would fund a coaching course for me, which they kindly agreed to. I would now be studying for my National C Coaching License and it would take approximately 4 months to complete.

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On another side note, our first opponents of the season, Peterhead, were now under new ownership. Hopefully the new owner won't have given their manager a wad of cash in time to change the balance of our match too much!

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Here is an overview of our transfer business so far in this window ahead of the new season. We've strengthened all over the pitch as the squad was in desperate need of some new blood so we've got a new keeper, 4 new defenders including Scott Gibb who has Under-21 international honours with Northern Ireland, a couple of midfielders plus 3 new strikers, the most talented being Ryan Miller who made his debut for us at Ibrox. The only outgoing was Gavin Boyle who was now third choice left back with a potential rating of just 1.5 stars so I decided to release him from his part time contract.

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So, the day had come for our first league match of the season with a trip to Balmoor Stadium to face Peterhead United.

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We were quietly confident ahead of this one after the two relatively impressive performances beforehand, I felt if we could replicate the desire shown then we'd be in with a good chance.

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We came up short in the end, but the first half performance pleased me. We took the lead thanks to Stephen Allan in the 23rd minute and held it through to half time. I encouraged the lads to keep it up going into the second but within 3 minutes of the restart Peterhead were level. They were a different side in the second half and we just couldn't handle them. The game finished 3-1 to the home side and we ended the night bottom of the table, exactly where most people think we'll spend all season. I'm determined to prove them wrong.

Our next game see's us travel to, strangely, Scotland's national stadium Hampden Park to face minnows Queens Park just 3 days after the Peterhead game. They are an amateur side who play their home games in the vast 52,000 seater stadium despite playing in the lowest division of the Scottish Football League.

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Queens Park drew their opening game away to Clyde so found themselves in 7th place. I changed personnel slightly for this game due to the side not being the fittest yet, so new signings Gordon Finlayson, Steven Smith, Nathan Moore and Greg Kerr were all given starts in a changed 4-5-1 formation on recommendation by Ian Rumsby. Hopefully this will change our fortunes as we need a win to pick up morale and most importantly, confidence.

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Which is exactly what we got thanks to an early cross-come-shot by 16 year old Ciaran Conroy. We dug in for the rest of the game and despite QP having more opportunities than us, we held on to record our first victory of the season which catapulted us up to 5th place.

Before our next match, we managed to snap up 3 more new signings taking this summer's arrival tally to 15.

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Daniel Harvie, Josh Flood and Graham Webster all joined the club until the end of the season.

Next up was our first home game of the season against unbeaten Elgin City at Dudgeon Park.

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It would be the first chance for our home fans to see some of the new blood that I had brought in and we hoped that we could entertain the home faithful and provide them with another victory against the 2nd placed side.

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I'm afraid Elgin got lucky today. We were the better team as the stats show and should have had the game wrapped up early in the second half but Ryan Miller and Richard Brittain passed up opportunities. We stay in 6th place after a converted penalty with 9 minutes left won it for Elgin. Onto the next one.

We faced a trip across the border into England to face Berwick Rangers at Shelfield Park. Geographically, the stadium is just about in England, although the town of Berwick is very much Scottish.

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Berwick have had a poor start to the season losing all 3 of their matches so far so we'll be hoping to take advantage of their misfortune and get back to winning ways on the road again. Berwick also had midweek Challenge Cup commitments against Livingston, losing 4-0, therefore I'm hoping they'll be tired ahead of the weekend.

In the week leading up to the match, our best player Richard Brittain asked for a move to a bigger club. I appeased him for now saying I'd accept a deal for a reasonable price, I just hope one doesn't come in. He could probably still do a job as high up as the Championship so to be playing for us is a big coup, hopefully he'll stay.

Some injury news also hit us before the Berwick game, Almeida will be out for approximately 2 months.

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We tinkered with the formation a little ahead of this one due to injuries but kept 1 upfront, that man being Greg Kerr this time. Flood was given his first start and we got underway.

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Unfortunately, we conceded late, again, twice this time to gift Berwick their first win of the season to our third defeat already.

Our final game of the month was against East Stirlingshire back at Dudgeon Park in a week's time.

One positive ahead of that game was the potential return of Stephen O'Neill.


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I decided to revert to a traditional 4-4-2 for this one and decided to go with the best possible starting 11 for the personnel we had. Could we get back to winning ways at home?

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In a nutshell, no.

We were extremely poor and this was compounded by our best player Brittain missing a penalty which would have got us back to level terms before the hour mark but it was saved and East Stirlingshire held on for the 3 points which sent us crashing back to the bottom of the league going into September.

The next update will show if there have been anymore incomings or outgoings from the club.

Thanks as always for reading ​

 

[athomash]

Will be following this