Buckie Thistle’s Graeme Stewart believes learning from mistakes is crucial as a manager, and revealed he still gets reminded about some of his errors ahead of their glamour Scottish Cup tie with Celtic this weekend.
Stewart is the longest-serving gaffer in the Breedon Highland League, having been appointed by the Jags in February 2015.
On Sunday, he takes his team to Parkhead to face Celtic in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup.
Stewart feels he’s learned what works best for him over time – and says he won’t be overcomplicating things for his players this weekend.
Boss found his own way
Looking back on times he’s got it wrong, Stewart said: “You learn as you go along and you make loads of mistakes.
“I’ve made loads of mistakes and I still make mistakes.
“But you get better for experience.
“I look back at my time at Buckie, and some of the decisions I made, and I think: ‘What the hell was I thinking?’
“I’ve kind of figured things out myself, I don’t really look at other managers, and think: ‘I’m going to do what they do.’
“Don’t get me wrong, I take things like shape, I’ll watch a game and see how teams set-up and I might like something.
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“I’ve done something like that before. I copied a formation from Tony Pulis years ago – and then we got battered 7-1 by Cove (in October 2017)!
“We never used it again, so I learnt from that.
“I loved the theory of it – I called it the swivel – but the boys who are still here from then still give me stick about it.
“It was a 4-4-2 that looked like a 5-3-2, but it was a disaster when we tried it, so I try to stick to my own things.
“I haven’t lived that down. Lewis MacKinnon (player-assistant manager) and Hamish Munro (player-coach) still bring it up.
“That was me trying to be clever, and I got busted – we definitely won’t be bringing that out on Sunday!”
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