Billy Brown's comments

Last updated : 23 May 2007 By BILLY BROWN
JIM JEFFERIES and I completed our fifth year in charge at Kilmarnock last Sunday and it's a day that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
There's no denying we endured a difficult start to our spell in Ayrshire and the first few seasons were testing to say the least.
There were a lot of financial cutbacks off the pitch and it was a period of great uncertainty for the club.

It also takes time to implement your own ideas and philosophies on the park but I think we are now playing football the way it should be played and are getting our rewards.
The last two years have been magnificent and I've sensed a real change in atmosphere at Rugby Park.
Sunday was the climax of that when not a single Kilmarnock fan left the ground at the final whistle.


To a man, woman and child, they stayed behind to applaud the players and they made it special for us. I'll never forget that. It was a terrific end to a terrific season. The reception we got from our supporters - and some of the Hearts fans who stayed behind - was incredible.
We really appreciated the ovation we got and it proved that all the hard work that's been done at Killie over the past few years has been worthwhile.

Finishing in fifth place in the SPL and reaching the CIS Cup Final represents success for Kilmarnock and with everything going well over the past two years everyone connected with the club has been on a high.
The players have been a pleasure to work with and we sat them all down last Saturday morning and explained how determined we were to finish on a high.

It didn't surprise me that we got the response we were looking for as we beat Hearts 1-0. I know we couldn't better fifth place but I always feel it is important to put a marker down for the following season.
We have finished off our last two campaigns strongly and I think it benefits us enormously when we meet up for pre-season training.
Making the top six when the split was made was a first-class achievement but I think we surpassed all expectations in the closing weeks of the season.

We claimed more points in the final five games than any other team in the top half of the table.
We won at Ibrox and Easter Road, two of the toughest away grounds in the country, and then beat Hearts to top it all off.

Finishing so well is magnificent but it means the bar has been raised again and we need to make sure do it all again next year.
That is the aim and the hard work starts immediately for the management team as we need to identify signing targets to freshen the squad up.
Hopefully, we will retain the same nucleus of players who served us so well this term although we do have to brace ourselves for the possibility that one or two bigger clubs might be keen to prise young Steven Naismith away from us.

Yet, again he proved his worth to us at the weekend, winning and converting the decisive penalty to take his tally for the season to an impressive 19 goals.
Steven's departure would be a monumental loss but when the time inevitably comes, as it did with Kris Boyd, we will have to rebuild for the future without him.
Thankfully, we are a resilient lot at Rugby Park.

It wasn't until I glanced around the pitch last weekend when the players were doing their lap of honour that I realised just how many guys were unavailable during the second half of the season.
Players such as Simon Ford, David Fernandez, David Lilley, Danny Invincibile and Allan Johnston are first-team regulars but hardly kicked a ball.

It speaks volumes for the spirit and attitude of those who came in that we didn't let our standards drop.


It augurs well for the future that we have guys such as Ford and Johnston to come back into the side so hopefully they will make us even stronger.