KIRK BROADFOOT was gutted to sign off Inverness duty with a Premiership play-off defeat to St Johnstone.
The veteran defender revealed the second-leg tie at McDiarmid Park on Monday night was his last for Caley Thistle after spending one year in the Highlands.
The former Rangers and Kilmarnock defender says his next club will be more local to his Ayrshire surroundings due to family reasons.
He said: “They’ve got a good core of boys here. The manager will add again. There were big players missing tonight such as Shane Sutherland, who will be back next year. I’m sure they will be there or there abouts.
“Unfortunately, I’ll not be there. This was my final game for the club.
“I’ll keep playing, I feel fit enough. As you can see, it was my 47th game this season, my sixth in 21-days and I feel fine. It will be more local for the family.
“The manager and the club have been great with me – they’ve given me more days off than the rest of the boys. Still, being away from the family for those few nights, I don’t want that next year.
“I’m in no rush to decide. At my age, people look at that rather than performances and stats. Who knows what will happen.
“I’ve had a great season. I’ve been allowed to express myself. With the group we had and the way we played, it was just unfortunately a step too far.”
As Broadfoot said, the fixture scheduling has been brutal for Billy Dodds’ men over the play-off period.
However, he doesn’t think fitness was a factor in Inverness’ eventual 6-2 defeat.
He added: “It is a lot of football, but I think the boys like it. All you’re doing is play, recover, play, recover. It was the same when I was down in England in the Championship, we were playing every Saturday, Tuesday – you actually become used to it.
“The recovery becomes so key. If you don’t do it well, you’ll get found out on the pitch.
“If you look at the League One play-off, it’s a semi-final then a final. Maybe it would be more entertaining that way.”
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