Amid the celebrations inside Hampden on Sunday evening Ross County manager Jim McIntyre afforded himself a moment of quiet reflection.
He had just led his side to League Cup success and it was a moment to savour with friends.
But one of them was missing. Former Celtic manager Tommy Burns, and McIntyre took time out to remember one of his mentors, who died in 2008 from skin cancer.
Burns paid Kilmarnock £440,000 to take McIntyre to Reading in 1998 and while his three year spell in English football was disappointing, the time spent under Burns’ tutelage left a lasting impression on the County manager.
He said: “My biggest coaching influence was Tommy Burns.
“He would have a smile on his face if he was still with us and probably would have thought I would never be a manager. I worked with him for 18 months and while it was not a great time in my career due to injuries I learned so much.
“I hadn’t done any coaching badges until I worked with him at Reading, but Tommy had the knack of making you a better player and a better person. It was a pleasure to work with him. He had so much passion. Tommy showed me the importance of having players who wanted to be on the ball and did not shirk responsibility. He was fantastic.”
McIntyre also took time to thank another man for pushing him into coaching, Press and Journal columnist Alex Smith.
He said: “Alex was instrumental as he encouraged me to do my coaching badges.
“He is another fantastic football man who I hold in high regard and still speak to regularly.”
McIntyre’s focus must be the future.
He said: “We should be targeting trying to finish in a European place, but we have to walk before we run. The biggest thing for me is to keep building and we know if we finish in the top six and have won a cup the expectations will only increase.
“It will be very difficult to do this again but it is not impossible and we have to have aspirations. I did not start the season being content to stay in the league. I want to be in charge of a top six side and if we don’t make it I will have failed.
“My target when I came here was to stay up and then make us a top six side, but we have a long way to go to do that and if we don’t get the points we need in the next four games I’ll be disappointed and so will the players as we know we are good enough.”
