The best team I ever coached

A FAIRYTALE SUCCESS...EKFC cap their first season by lifting the SFA Challenge Cup

IAIN KING, Toronto, May 25, 2018

THIS is a picture of the best team I ever coached.

Not the best players perhaps but the best TEAM.

Every side I have sent out since, be it in the Lowland League in Scotland or the U11s boys competition with North Toronto Nitros here in my adopted homeland of Canada is judged against them.

They are a benchmark, a template in my coaching life. Why?

Four years on from the day they lifted the SFA Challenge Cup in their debut season in Scotland's professional ranks I pondered that question.

Why do they still live so vividly in my memory? Why do I still smile every time I think of that season?

The reason is that they learned how to make the whole greater than the sum of their parts.

Our Kilby team was a motley crew recruited from the best amateurs my hometown had to offer, four loan kids from League Two Clyde and some players discarded by the pros who needed a staging post on the road to redemption.

In the four years since I was privileged to work with them alongside my boyhood friends Craig Young and Ally Graham and our goalkeeping guru Hugh O'Neill so much has happened in my life.

From learning every day in the professional academies of Motherwell and Airdrieonians to lifting this famous trophy again with a brilliant BSC Glasgow side to finding the courage to chase my dream of coaching full-time in a country I love.

Last Sunday in Canada's capital city of Ottawa with the Nitros' 07 boys we faced the biggest test these kids have had in their young soccer lives so far.

The Spring Kick-Off Classic in the lush surroundings of the George Nelms Sports Fields and the challenge of a match against MLS franchise Montreal Impact.

A team that seldom loses in their league games in Toronto, a teeming city of almost three million people, had gone through a rough weekend of learning.

We found that when you travel out of your comfort zone and face the best Ottawa and Quebec has to offer they are bigger, faster and way more physical. We got taken to school.

So the big lesson they had to learn before their final game against the Impact was how to make the whole greater than the sum of their parts. The Kilby 2014 way.

These gifted Nitros kids train four times a week and are true multi-sport athletes, often excelling in other disciplines like ice hockey, athletics or basketball.

To the people back home in Scotland it's hard to explain the difference that makes in the raw material you work with, the dedication they have and the sporting brains they possess. They are beyond their years.

I didn't resort to telling them about the coach's glory days in the sun with EKFC, I hate that approach.

I just sat for a quiet moment as the tournament pulsed around me and thought back to the experiences of that Cup run four years and drew on them.

For all the pride I have now in coaching these kids, when you face an MLS academy there is a gap to bridge not only for the players but the coach.

I understand those who look at coaching grassroots soccer in Canada as vastly different to trying to drag a group of hairy-arsed Scotsmen to success operating in the gritty ranks just under the SPFL.

I get it that they think it's not the same coaching process but believe me it is.

It's about finding a plan the team can execute, about identifying a way to play so they can learn the strengths of the guy next to them. It's about achieving something TOGETHER.

And that's what the band of brothers in the picture at the start of this blog had above any other team I have ever coached. Togetherness.

The standards were set by players like Aaron Murdoch, brought up in the game at Hearts, a fearsome competitor who once decked our young striker Johnny Diack and sparked an all-out K Park brawl because Johnny was messing around in training and those standards we set weren't being met.

They were set by Graeme Gallacher who didn't always start every game but treated every session like a match in his meticulous preparation and attention to detail, a trait others looked at, admired and mirrored.

They were set by Craig McLeish, even then becoming a terrific coach in his own right, who boiled with a sense of indignation at not starting the semi-final then reacted in the right manner with two goals off the bench to help clinch a thrilling 5-4 win over Lothian Thistle Hutcheson Vale.

They were set by the quiet dignity and inspirational leadership of skipper Marc Templeton who nervelessly scored the penalty that built on Chris McDougall's opener and brought the trophy home.

They were set by the infectious enthusiasm and will to win of the ball of energy that was Clyde's on-loan madcap midfielder Kieran Daw, a special talent.

More important than Kieran's ability was that deep down he realised those around him might not have his background in the game but they could still improve him as a player. And a person. Togetherness.

Four years on from the day this squad lifted the first trophy in East Kilbride FC's history the club has grown to such an extent that the last boss was Billy Stark, a former Celtic and Scotland assistant manager.

It is only a matter of time before they become an SPFL club and I pray they get there now under the leadership of former Newcastle United midfielder Brian Kerr.

Three days after this picture was taken in the wake of our 2-0 Final triumph over Dalbeattie Star at Palmerston EKFC's hierarchy took the decision to replace the coaching staff.

The damaging bitterness and stinging hurt I felt over that has long since faded, when you have watched one of your best friends, Eddie Wolecki Black, almost die on the floor of a dressing-room you get a sense of perspective on what truly matters in football. And life.

On my last trip home I was delighted to watch a Kilby U-20 match at Ayr United's Somerset Park with the club's driving forces James and Paul Kean and then be invited in with Eddie to watch a first team training session under the shrewd guidance of Starky.

Wounds heal, the journey goes on. In Eddie and my lifelong pal Craig I have the sounding boards still that I need a world away to help me cherish the chance I have here in Toronto.

This summer at Nitros I am privileged to head up the U11 boys, the U12 girls and work alongside my Brazilian coaching colleague Martinho Kibato with our U17 boys in the Ontario Player Development League (OPDL).

It is such a different life from the frenetic one I had as Head of Sport at the Scottish Sun whilst juggling my journalism with my football.

For the last 16 months I have been a full-time coach, immersed in the quest to make myself better. It has been a rewarding education.

Seven years of my life had the thread of helping build EKFC running through it, I am proud to have been a part of it. Always will be.

I loved every second of watching my son Bruce play for Kilby, of helping others enjoy their time playing in those gold and blue colours we first picked to be the club's brand.

I have a picture somewhere of me standing on what became K Park when it was just a patch of soggy reeds that James somehow saw as a stadium in his grand vision.

They are memories to treasure but the best picture will always be the one at the top of this blog. These guys taught their coaches about what being a true TEAM is.

We just gave them the tools and they built something special themselves and I have learned now, that's what a coach should do.

It's up to any team I work with now to take their mantle but it's going to be a tough task, the emotions of that one season are a well-worn touchstone for me even now.

I reckon I will always look at the picture above and say: "This is the best team I ever coached."