Wishaw star Kevin Barry Grant says it has been like a breath of fresh air since boss David Dunn took over the West of Scotland League club.
Mark Daly stepped down in December, with Dunn taking the reins in January, bringing in Dean Richardson and Rab Sneddon as part of his backroom team.
The Beltane Park side were struggling in Conference C, but Dunn pulled them up to a fifth-placed finish, and midfielder Grant says they might even have been pushing for promotion had the takeover happened sooner.
‘KB’, who celebrated his testimonial season with the club this past year, said: “It has been immense since Dunny took over, and what a turn-around.
“The start of the season was excellent, we had a very good start and were one of the form teams out of all the divisions.
“We were scoring lots of goals, hardly conceding any, and were playing very well. I felt myself that I was playing really well.
“But then we went through a wee spell that was awful, I don’t think we had won a game in about nine, and it was from November right to Christmas, which is why Mark ended up leaving.
“He felt he had to leave, because he wasn’t getting much more out of us, and to be fair, Dunny was perfect for us.
“The way we want to play, and the team that we’ve got, the boys are all very good and technical football players.”
Dunn won his first five games and was unbeaten in nine of the 11 matches he took charge of, ending with a battling 3-2 defeat at Cambuslang Rangers in the cup last month.
And KB praised the whole coaching staff for the impact on the team.
He added: “Dunny is football-daft, he lives for it, so for him to take over was great, and he’s brought in Dean Richardson, who is just the same as him, another technically very good player he was as well, who wants us to play properly and get stuck in and stuff.
“He brought in a wee bit of experience with Rab Sneddon, who was a coach when my dad was young. He has been about for years, and he’s one of the best guys in football.
“The combination of the three of them is brilliant, and Dunny got a really good run out of us. I think we only lost once or twice in all the games since he took over, which is brilliant.
“If he had maybe taken over a wee bit sooner we might have been pushing to go up – you never know.
“We still had to play Petershill, Neilston, Drumchapel, teams at the top of the division, and we were excellent against them, so it’s credit to them all, they were brilliant with us.”
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