RAY McKinnon has the look of a man who once bent down to pick up a £1 coin on the pavement only to discover a £20 note lying right beside it. Glenrothes is never likely to be mistaken for Monte Carlo in the glamour stakes but the Raith Rovers manager surveys the scene in front of him at the town’s sports centre and declares himself happy with his lot.

A few of his injured players are congregated at a table on the other side of the café and he plans on going over and having a catch-up with them once he is finished here. A short while later and the rest of the squad pile in for coffee and lunch following their yoga session, mingling freely with mums, young kids and the gregarious group of grannies chatting animatedly after their swim. McKinnon can’t help but beam with pride.

It might not seem like much, but this is what sustains him now. Twelve years after starting out with Lochee United in the unforgiving Junior football scene, McKinnon is now approaching the end of his first season as a full-time manager.

“It’s been a breeze!” he says, and he’s only half joking. A talented player who once famously caught the eye of Brian Clough, who took him to Nottingham Forest from Dundee United for a hefty fee, McKinnon, now 45, has had to put the miles in as a manager. He returned to Lochee for a second spell and moved to the Scottish Football Association as a technical development officer before agreeing – after some deliberation – to take a £20,000 pay cut to join part-time Brechin City.

“Jim Fleeting [the SFA’s director of football development] persuaded me to take it and I didn’t think I could live on that. But I decided to go for it. I made a part-time job a full-time job as I felt that was the only way to do it. I felt if you’re going to be serious about football, you have to do it properly.”

After three years at Brechin, McKinnon felt last summer it was time to move again. Working without an agent, he insists it was nothing more than a leap of faith, hoping that if he jumped, someone would catch him before he hit the ground. As it was, two different clubs presented the opportunity of that long-awaited move into full-time football.

One was St Mirren, who decided instead to go with Ian Murray and were replacing him as manager before the end of the year. The other was Rovers, who offered McKinnon the job and have not regretted it since. They will play their final game of the regular season against Livingston this afternoon and then wait to see whether it is Falkirk or Hibernian next in the first leg of the play-offs on Wednesday night.

McKinnon is unashamedly excited about what lies in store. When he signed on at Stark’s Park last summer, the remit had been to “revamp the squad, revitalise it”. There had been little or no talk of promotion and McKinnon was not daft enough to promise it either. The longer the campaign wore on, however, he began to wonder if finishing fourth or higher might be possible.

Such has been Raith’s form since the turn of the year that they sealed the final play-off berth with weeks to spare. McKinnon, unsurprisingly, has been trying to play up their role as underdogs but talk of Raith “sneaking under the radar” is not fooling anyone any more.

“We’ve built up a good head of steam in recent months,” he admitted. “So now it’s not about being under the radar any more. We’re there on merit. I’m quite comfortable talking about our prospects as we don’t fear anybody.

“Hibs have been in the division for two years now and they’re really a Premiership club who need to get back there as soon as possible. Falkirk have 3,500 fans, close to a £1 million budget, and are another big club that wants to get into the Premiership. So that means there’s no pressure on us. The lads can just enjoy it.”

Kirkcaldy has not hosted top-flight football since 1997. Should Raith make it through to go up this summer, then McKinnon makes it clear that sizeable changes would be required to prepare them for such a challenge.

“We’d have to draw up new plans in the summer if we got promoted,” he said. “The club would have to reinvest in the squad and we’d need to sign more players who were proven at a higher level. We can’t keep taking gambles all the time. I think if we went up, the remit would be just to try to stay there the way Hamilton have done. They have done well with a really good infrastructure, bringing through young players then selling them on. That’s a model for us but that would need investment.”

That is for another day. For now, McKinnon – currently being linked with the manager’s post at former club Dundee United – continues to enjoy all the different aspects of the job that he was deprived of as a part-time manager.

“The whole process of working closer with the players, building that rapport with them, getting on the training field every day – you get to know them all inside out. I always have chats with them to see how they’re getting on and all of that has been hugely beneficial. It’s much easier to build that bond and trust when you’re full-time. It’s not a case of just turning up two nights a week.

People have said it’s the best atmosphere they’ve seen around the place in years. We had our Player of the Year dance last weekend. I think last year they had about seven people at it. This year we had 160 – it was like being at a wedding! So we’ve totally changed the environment.”

Having famously worked under first Jim McLean at Tannadice and then Clough at Forest, it took a move to Aberdeen to make him realise all managers did not have to rule by fear.

“The big eye-opener for me was Willie Miller,” he said. “When I signed for Aberdeen, I had just been through the Jim McLean era at United and then Brian Clough at Forest. No disrespect to Clough, but that was his final season at Forest and alcoholism had kicked in, so I never saw the best of him. When I went to Aberdeen, I saw a manager who was doing great, finished third, and there was a human element to him.

“He was strong on the training ground and in the dressing room but on a Monday morning he could still have a conversation with you. I was stunned by that. I’d walk in and he’d say ‘good morning Raymond, how was your weekend?’ and I wasn’t expecting that at all. It wasn’t something I had experienced before.

“I soon learned I would rather one day be a manager like him than the others. I didn’t mould myself on Willie but I thought having that human angle was really important. You do it your own way but that changed a lot for me.”