Raith Rovers: Manager Ian Murray hails 'outstanding' help he receives every day from new board installed in summer

Gaffer Murray, whose day to day duties in the 2022-23 campaign were varied and considerable as he coped with the high demands of running the Stark’s Park team with much less backing, has benefited greatly from May’s arrival of a consortium of new owners which has resulted in the welcome addition of men like chief executive Andrew Barrowman and technical director John Potter.

“It’s still a difficult job,” Murray told the Fife Free Press. “We’re trying to win games but I can put all my focus on the tasks that are important rather than the smaller ones with the new board.

"The help that I’ve been given has been outstanding from them and from the staff that were already there. It’s been really, really good and it feels like we’re trying to build something together which is really important.

"It’s letting everybody concentrate on areas that they’re good at rather than maybe asking them to do stuff that they’re not so good at.

"So I’m really, really happy with the support and the structure that we’ve got.

"And I just hope we can repay them come the end of the season.”

While Murray and his players’ obvious priority is achieving the minimum of a top four play-off finishing berth this season, he revealed his keenness to go one better in the SPFL Trust Trophy – Raith lost 1-0 to Hamilton Accies in last campaign’s final – after landing a home tie against League 1 Montrose on Saturday, October 14 in the last 16 of this year’s competition.

The boss added: “We definitely want to win that cup. We are only in four competitions in a season that we can win so we wat to try and get as far as we can in all of them.

"Raith Rovers have got a really good record in the last three or four years in this competition.

"It’s something we think we can win, it’s something we see as a winnable achievement. We just keep going. The more home ties the better.

“We know if we beat Montrose, which will be a really, really hard game then we’re into the quarter-finals.

"And at that stage in any competition you’ve got to believe that you can go all the way.”

Murray’s managerial career started at Dumbarton in 2012 and he has since bossed St Mirren and Airdrieonians before arriving at Raith in summer 2022.

When asked what he would be doing now if he wasn’t a manager, the 42-year-old former Hibs, Rangers, Norwich City and Scotland utility play er added: “I honestly have no idea. I would probably have gone into a trade or something like that and do something along those lines because it was always football for me.

"I wasn’t great at school. I was all right at Modern Studies.

"I was quite decent at that but outwith that I was pretty average to be honest.

"I could have been a plumber. My dad (Peter) was a plumber so I probably would have gone down that route.”

Looking ahead to a tough run of Championship fixtures which sees Raith face Dundee United at home (October 7), Arbroath away (October 21) and Dunfermline Athletic at home (October 28) in their next three league fixtures, Murray said: “It’s certainly not an easy run of games when you look down at all the fixtures.”

After Saturday’s 2-1 victory at Ayr United, Raith go into this weekend’s Dundee United encounter in second place in the division with 16 points from seven league matches.

Jim Goodwin’s team are on 17 points.