Dunfermline Athletic boss Jim Jefferies believes his Manager of the Month award is testament to just how far the Fife club have come over the past 12 months.
Just shy of a year ago the Pars entered administration and everyone at East End Park faced an uncertain future with a player exodus, a points deduction, transfer embargo and relegation all to come in the months that followed.
Despite that though, the Pars’ outlook is now positive as they head towards the promotion play-offs and the fact the SPFL’s February managerial accolade was handed to Jefferies was perhaps symbolic in itself.
“Everybody is pulling together at this football club now,” he said.
“The supporters have done their bit in keeping the club alive, we’ve tried to repay them with good football and giving 110% every week, and I don’t think even in games where we’ve dropped points we could complain about any lack of effort.
“Yes, we’ve made mistakes in some games and given goals away through young boys being a bit nave but, as far as effort goes, we can’t complain.
“It’s to match the effort that the supporters have put into the club and the people who have taken over the club.
“We have disappointments like Saturday, where we’ve played well and should have won, but everybody is pulling together and everybody is enjoying things.
“That always makes up for a lot when things don’t go well. You can say, ‘These boys tried and they didn’t show that they didn’t want to win the game.’
“Everybody tries their hardest and that’s the way you go forward.
“Over the years I’ve managed to collect a few of these awards I suppose, but as I’ve often said it’s due to the efforts of everybody not just the players on the park. You just have to accept these things on behalf of everybody and it was a great month.
“We must have been close a couple of months during the season but other teams did well as well and deserved it.
“It’s been a very competitive league, the way the results have gone, but February was a great month for us because there were four difficult games two games away and two games at home.”
February proved to be a fruitful month for the Pars as they recorded four league wins out of four, beating East Fife and Forfar away before notching two 3-0 successes over Ayr and Arbroath.
The feel-good factor currently evident at East End Park is certainly a far cry from how the mood was last year.
Jefferies said: “When all the players left and you are sitting there thinking, ‘Wait a minute, we’re going to get 15 points deducted here.’ And, ‘Where are we going to get another point from?’
“Those players did fantastically well to do what they did. It was just a game too far because we had to double up with the Under-20s when they were going well in the cup.
“Maybe in hindsight, with what has all happened at the club, it wasn’t a bad thing to go into League One because we had to regroup and we didn’t have a lot of money.
“If we had made it into the Championship, we might have toiled with the restrictions that were on us but in this division we might have got away with it a wee bit.
“I think in the Championship, things might have been a bit different. You never know.
“But it let us get our heads down, get the club sorted out and have a season where we were always going to be in with a chance of getting promoted. It’s now in our own hands to do that.”