Brora Rangers prepare for SPFL Playoffs with East Kilbride as former Inverness Caledonian Thistle defender looks to help Highland League champions reach League Two
WALLACE Duffy says he wants to help Brora Rangers reach new heights after already being part of their historic treble this season.
The defender who arrived at Brora Rangers in December, has helped the club win the Highland League and Highland League Cup this month to add to the North of Scotland Cup before his arrival in October.
It has been a good second half of the campaign following a tumultuous first half of the season where he was made redundant by Inverness Caledonian Thistle after the club went into administration in October.
He briefly played for Strathspey Thistle in November before arriving at Dudgeon Park in December and has helped Brora achieve their most successful season ever.
Now Brora Rangers are looking to win promotion from the Highland League and face East Kilbride in the SPFL League Two play-offs semi finals next weekend.
Duffy says it is the ambition at the club which led him to join in the first place and he wants to help them win promotion.
He said: “As soon as I signed for Brora Rangers I was told this was a club that wanted to win the league, both cups and get promoted.
“We are three out of three so far so I want to help the team get promoted too.”
Duffy says Brora Rangers are a team which thrive on pressure, feeling that is when they produce their best results.
Brora won the Highland League title on goal difference from Brechin City, but did lose six games during the campaign. But they clinched the title after winning their final six matches of the season and Duffy believes the squad played their best football when the pressure was really on them.
He said: “Since I have joined the club we took the title into our own hands and every game felt like we had to win it.
“Earlier in the season we got a cushion and then we lost two games and afterwards I thought that is when we went on to play our best football.
“When we felt like it was too easy, we perhaps relaxed too much.
“It has been good that the pressure has been on us because these boys have stepped up to the pressure. I am delighted we have finished the season with exactly what we wanted.”
Duffy says playing at Brora Rangers, where there is an expectation to win every game, is a different mindset compared to playing with Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the Championship during his four years at the club.
He feels that he has always been a player who performed best in matches that are seen as big occasions.
He said: “I didn’t do that too often with Caley Thistle, especially last season unfortunately.
“I find it is different with Brora and their mentality is what I was used to playing as a kid where you have to win every game.
“It doesn’t matter who you are playing, you have to win every game. Since being at Brora, we have been winning 95 per cent of the games that I have been in, which is what I want to be part of.
“We score a lot of goals and we don’t concede many and we have won games by 3-0 and 4-0.
“It is different with Brora Rangers and it has been good winning leagues and cups.
“Obviously I had an opportunity a couple years ago to win a cup final against Celtic with Caley Thistle but it was a mammoth task. But the bigger the game, the better I play.”
“A lot of the games at Caley Thistle you would have classed as not so good, I probably wasn’t at the level required.
“But the bigger games I always performed better in, whether that was subconsciously and I felt like I did that in the cup final.”
Brora Rangers became the first team to achive a clean sweep of trophies since Buckie Thistle 71 years ago. Duffy said Fraserburgh were tough opposition, but said their first half performance alone deserved to win the cup final.
He said: “It is quite surprising it has been so long since someone did the treble as I thought someone would have done it before that.
“It was quite a stuffy Fraserburgh team we were up against. They don’t concede many goals and to put three past them was really pleasing.
“In the first half we were very good. The first 15 minutes was frantic as it was a cup final and teams were trying to get a foot in the game.
“We got the goals that we deserved and we should have put three or four past them in the first half.
“We were happy that we got that cushion because we knew that they could be relentless with their long balls.
“They were throwing men forward and were bound to get a chance or two. But we are happy to win it.”
Read: Brora Rangers striker says scoring in a Highland League Cup final is a dream come true.