Kevin Haynes Weekly Update

As it is typical for this stage of the season, there has been player movement in and out of the club since my last update. We have brought in Shaun Miller and Arron Congleton who have both impressed since they came in during the pre-season. Their additions will add further competition for places, particularly in our midfield area. 

Unfortunately we have also recently announced the departure of Jamie Devlin to Preston Athletic. I am as disappointed as I know some of the fans will be that it hasn’t worked out between Jamie and I. It had got to a stage where working together had become unsustainable and it’s not something I had envisaged happening when building the squad for the current campaign.

This is a very important season for the club and I have placed massive expectations on the players, not only on the park but in everything they do and when I feel players fall short of that as Manager I have a responsibility to act and do right by the club and by the group of players as a collective.  I wish Jamie well in his career going forward, and I thank him for his contribution during his time at Dunbar United. 

We have played a few more pre-season matches since the last update and I feel we gave good accounts of ourselves in what has been 2-1 loses on both occasions. The Bo’ness United match was spoiled a bit by a referee who lost control of what I thought was a competitive match. 

The referee could have handled things differently in my opinion but didn’t and decided to send off 2 x Dunbar Utd players and 1 x Bo’ness United player.  The main disadvantage worked out well for us and it gave us an opportunity to work on another situation which is likely to happen over the course of a season and we can now refer back to this experience and manage the situation. 

Game 4 of our pre-season schedule saw us take on our 4th lowland league side that was the Heart of Midlothian B development team. They were a good young side who are coached each day in a full time environment and again I felt we competed well. We scored a good goal and finished the game strongly creating more chances in the final 10 mins which was pleasing. 

With the season just a week away,  I feel we are in a good place and I can’t wait to start the competitive games.  As always,  many thanks for the support and hopefully we will have many supporters at New Countess Park tomorrow for our penultimate pre-season match against Arniston Rangers, and also on Tuesday where we will wrap up our pre-season preparations and once again welcome to our ground  the return of the Hibernian FC development team.

All the best 

Kevin Haynes

DUFC