Huntly manager Martin Skinner is already focusing on improving next season – whenever it begins.
When the Highland League declared the season over and crowned Brora Rangers champions last month the Black and Golds, sitting in 12th, had five games left.
The Christie Park outfit endured a difficult start to the season losing their first seven games in all competitions and not recording a win in the league until their ninth outing.
Things did improve with the Strathbogie side picking up six wins in the league as well as draws against the likes of Fraserburgh and Formartine United, but Skinner is already looking for better next term.
He said: “You could have written a book about our season given the ups and downs.
“It was a disaster to start with a really poor beginning.
“The standards we set at the start of the season were the lowest we’ve seen for a long time at the club.
“We managed to improve and pick ourselves up and get some better results against sides like Buckie, Fraserburgh and Formartine.
“We got some points on the board and at the end we have five games against teams around us.
“Obviously we haven’t been able to play them but we fancied ourselves to do well in those games.
“We felt we could have got more points and moved further up the table, but in terms of where we were in the table we got what we deserved.
“We started really poorly and lost the first six games so we’ve got no complaints about where we were.
“There are positives and negatives but we want to improve for next season and that’s what we want to focus on now.”
It’s not known yet when next season will start due to the coronavirus lockdown.
And Skinner is already facing the prospect of having to rethink his pre-season plans.
The Huntly boss added: “We had our pre-season all planned out before the shutdown.
“We had some good games lined up for pre-season that would have helped us going into the start of the season.
“We’ll have to wait and see what happens and reorganise as best we can.
“It will depend on a lot of factors because we don’t know when the SPFL season may be concluded and when they may restart.
“We’ll have to adjust, getting players fit is the biggest challenge because not everyone has big enough gardens to do fitness work and you can only go on so many runs.
“There is only so much you can do without getting the squad together, but everybody is in the same boat and doesn’t know what’s happening.
“Hopefully when the virus passes we can back to normality because I don’t think anybody realises how much they miss football until it’s not there.”
