Cambusnethan Thistle “Your club” History with co club founder Kyle Duguid

Kyle Duguid was part of founding Cambusnethan thistle along with player Adam and would now describe his role as “club chair & founder”.

Kyle Duguid

Age – 19

Clubs- cambusnethan talbot, kirkfield United, Wishaw Wycombe

What inspired you to start Cambusnethan Thistle?

It was Adam who founded the team with me who came to me with the idea of starting our own amateur team and asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. I immediately said yes and offered to help to start the club up and manage the team as I have a good bit of coaching experience with younger age groups and wanted the challenge of managing an adult side. We had a few guys interested in getting involved who had been out of competitive football for a few years, similar to ourselves and we thought that our side would be a good avenue for getting men back into football after some time off.

What were the biggest challenges in getting the club off the ground?

The financial side of things was tough in the beginning, trying to arrange sponsors so we could get kits for the team as well as not having too much income from fees as the squad number wasn’t too big at the start, leaving us short a few months which had to be caught up on during the following months. Aside from the finances, I think the huge turnover of players you get as a new club can be challenging as the squad gets disrupted from having a different starting 11 and subs every week, and so you can’t get a really good rhythm going from the start of the season.

How did you go about finding players at the start?

Initially our squad was made up of our friends, friends of friends and some previous team mates we had played with. We had also used the GDSFC player pages to try and get some more guys in during the season when we felt like we had needed some more numbers which helped us a bit as well.

How did you recruit your first coaches, volunteers, etc?

Being a co-founder meant that the manager base had been covered from the start; however, I did have a few guys who wanted to be involved as an assistant coach throughout the season and have since moved on. However, we are still grateful for their help during the season. We have had one of our players, Lewis Haggart, move into the assistant manager role and has been a brilliant addition to the coaching side as well as another previous player Jamie Watt come in to work with our goalkeepers. We also have another current player, Cammy Gunn, transitioning to the coaching side of the team for next season.

Did you have a clear vision for the club from day one, or did it evolve over time?

Our vision at the start was to purely focus on bringing men, especially young men around our own age, back into football after they had given it up and bring the enjoyment back in playing. This meant we had been very open about bringing in lots of players and focused on gametime however as the season progressed and the squad developed, the players and us agreed that getting beat constantly isn’t very enjoyable so we kind of developed into a more competitive atmosphere within the club and have had the boys pushing each other for starting places and] are looking to compete and try to get results every week.