Reflecting on what has been an eventful two-and-a-half years or so at East End Park, Jim Jefferies could have been forgiven for looking back in anger yesterday.
After taking over from Jim McIntyre in March 2012, efforts to keep Dunfermline Athletic at Scottish football’s top table ultimately failed, before his valiant attempt to take the Pars back into the Premier League was scuppered by the club’s perilous financial state off the field.
Costs were cut back and Jefferies effectively had to work on a shoestring budget to help stave off the unthinkable, while the 15-point deduction the club suffered by way of sanctions left them fighting against relegation.
All that took its toll and the Pars slipped down another league, although Jefferies rebuilt the team with an emphasis on youth in the hope of bouncing back at the first attempt.
However, a play-off final defeat to Cowdenbeath stopped the Pars from returning to the Championship last season, and there are warnings that the club may have to go part-time next season should they fail to achieve promotion this time around.
The 64-year-old’s masterplan was always to hand over the reins over to John Potter and Neil McCann at the end of a title-winning season this May but, with results stuttering of late, Monday’s board meeting simply hastened his departure.
Still though, Jefferies insisted yesterday he will still look back on his eventful tenure at the Pars will great fondness.
“For all the hassle, I’ve enjoyed my time at Dunfermline,” he told The Courier.
“Sometimes I could see it far enough and it’s a 24-hour-a-day job, so you have to deal with that.
“It’s hard.
“For all that hassle, everybody’s been great with me, they’ve always made me feel welcome.
“They’ve always respected what I’ve done and I think that was shown in the statement the board made.
“They’ve appreciated what I’ve done in difficult times at the club but you can only do that for so long.
“I was hoping to do it until the end of the season but if they can’t go and change it massively it was time for a change.
“It was common knowledge that I had always intimated I would retire at the end of the season – in fact I was packing up last year and the board asked me to stay on after the disappointment of the play-off defeat against Cowdenbeath.
“I was wanting to give it up then but they asked me to continue.
“I said this would be my last year and in that time the remit was to groom John and Neil, and I was fine with that.
“Yes it would have been nice to have gone out on a high with getting promoted.
“There’s still half a season to go and they’ve got a big game on Saturday.
“But part of me was saying that, given what has happened in the last couple of weeks, the atmosphere on Saturday might just be difficult.
“I’ve been in this situation before and there might not have been much patience.
“If we didn’t start well we might have found it was a difficult atmosphere for the players to go and try and win.
“So I thought if there was a wee change it would be best to do it now – I felt it was the right time for Neil and John.
“I hope the fans get behind the players and John and Neil, and there might be a wee bit more leeway because there’s been a change.
“They’ve got to be fair and get behind the players because I believe they’re still good enough to win promotion.
“I told the board a few weeks ago I still believe they’re good enough and they’ll be there or thereabouts. There’s a long way to go.
“Now, it’s a wee start for the players.
“For them as well as John and Neil: they’re starting out on the ladder and they can help them go up the way.
“All in all, I think it was the right time to go.
“This was always going to be my last season – in management, in the dugout.
“If anything comes up that interests me in any way in football matters I would consider it, but not in management – I’ve had enough.”
Jefferies came in for stark criticism from some sections of the support following the Scottish Cup defeat to Stranraer last week, and that intensified at the weekend when his team slipped to fourth spot in the league after a 3-1 loss to Airdrieonians.
However, the veteran boss insists the bigger picture prompted his decision.
“Criticism, to me, is like water off a duck’s back because I’ve had it for that long!” he continued.
“The fans have been fantastic to me at this club and I think they’ve appreciated what we’ve gone through and sticking with them.
“At times, I could have said ‘what’s going on here’ and I think that’s what the club and the directors have appreciated.
“I’ve helped them through a tough time.
“It’s now a totally new board, who have done wonders to save the club, but they’re different to the board when we started the plan to bring through youngsters at the club.
“Everything was going swimmingly before we went into administration and we lost players.
“It’s not easy to keep heads high when that happens.
“We came through that period but it didn’t change the fact the club didn’t have the resources to go and do what they did before.
“Last season, if I’m honest – although I couldn’t say this publicly, because it was massive financially for the club not to be in there – I think we would have struggled if we had gone up to the Championship.
“I don’t think we were at a stage where we could have improved it greatly. We might have, but I think, looking at it, to go in there and toil wasn’t the idea.
“You want to go up and stay there and challenge again after maybe a couple of years in the Championship.
“That was the plan, but that was long-term and as everybody knows long-term in football is about three months nowadays. That’s how football is.
“When you’re building something it takes three, four, but you don’t get that.
“I’ve been here three years and they need to get up this year, which puts a lot of pressure on the young players as well.
“The only way you can help make it better or get there is if the club could afford to bring in other players, but they can’t.”
Jefferies freely admits he would have liked to have seen the job through and gain promotion back to the Championship this season, but he still has faith in those he is leaving behind at the Fife club.
Asked how the players reacted to yesterday’s news, he joked: “I’m not sure if they were bleary-eyed after their Christmas do or they were greeting at the news!
“I would probably back it was the Christmas do!
“Seriously though, I’ve said to the players, and it’s probably why I’ve stayed, I’ve had a lot of joy coming in to training – even though they’ve frustrated me at matches – because of the way they’ve gone about it.
“I’ve never had to stop a training session, which I’ve had to do at other clubs, to tell them it’s not good enough.
“They’re so enthusiastic and they want to do well.
“So I’ve told the players their season starts on Saturday.
“They’re playing probably the best game they could get, in Stranraer, and if they beat them they’ll go into at least the top three, depending on results.
“Let’s make it a clean start on Saturday and get a win.
“They’re probably get a better atmosphere, the fans will get behind John and Neil, hopefully, and if they can get the win that will give them a wee boost going into the next few games.”