IAN McCall will always be grateful to Ayr United for offering him a route back into football following a spell out the game as he dealt with personal issues.
But the Thistle boss insists that he’ll be putting sentiment to one side when his former club come to Firhill on league duty this afternoon.
McCall took the reins at Somerset Park in January 2015 after a period of three years away from the sport, and enjoyed a successful spell in Ayrshire before returning to Firhill.
Jim Duffy, who yesterday was handed the Ayr job on a permanent basis, is an old pal but McCall insists that come three o’clock, he’ll be fully focussed on collecting three points - despite all that Ayr have done for him.
“Jim is a good pal of mine so whether I what I say is relevant, I don’t know,” McCall said. He certainly had the edge over me in Dundee derbies!
“He’s a really good football guy and Ayr are obviously a club I’ve got huge affection for. Whether I helped them is up for debate but I know they helped me at a difficult time in my life so I’ll never, ever forget that.
“When I was first went back [as Thistle manager] and they beat us 4-0 at Somerset, there wasn’t much sentiment that day!
“I can put it really, really well. Partick Thistle are my club, right? If – and this is a big if – I’m here for another few years and the powers that be grant me a testimonial, there’s only one team I would have and it would be Ayr United. That shows you what I feel they gave to me – the club and Lachlan Cameron.
“The way I look at it, this is the second part of my life. I’ve only got one former team and its Ayr United.
“When you’re given a second chance at things you enjoy every game. I didn’t enjoy young Andrew Dallas’ refereeing performance against Raith but you do enjoy the game, and every game has its own issues to negotiate. Saturday will be no different.”
Recent defeats to fellow promotion hopefuls Inverness, Kilmarnock and Raith Rovers have left Thistle playing catch-up in the race for the play-offs but McCall is confident his side can get back on track with a victory today.
“If you can win five games in a quarter [of the season] you’re in with a good shout of the play-offs,” he added. “That’s the target for us but that’s the target for everybody.
“We’re only looking at this one game – Duff’s turned it around a wee bit so it will be a tough game.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here