Allan Hale looks ahead to Stirling
Elgin City manager Allan Hale previews his team’s first League 2 away trip of the season at Stirling.
Transcript
00:00So it'll be a tough game, Stirling Albion, really good side, good manager, experienced as well,
00:05a big pitch, a really good surface. But yeah, we'll go down there, we'll prepare through the
00:10week and we'll go down there next week and hopefully continue where we've left off today
00:15with hopefully another strong performance. Every game is going to pose a different challenge and
00:18we're going to have to play different systems, we're going to have to play different ways in
00:24terms of our approach to games and our game plan because that's what is demanding obviously. I
00:28think we showed that we've got that adaptability within our set-up, we changed shape a couple of
00:31times within the game. I can't speak highly enough of Russell, he's the epitome of what I want from
00:38my players and if you want to see what I want out of the players, you just need to watch Russell
00:42Dingwall. Maybe when we first came in, he played with a lot of intensity and aggression but I
00:47thought sometimes he used that in the wrong areas of the pitch, which allowed us to get picked off
00:52a wee bit because he's probably tried to double up and do other people's jobs. Now he's starting
00:57to get that tactical discipline in terms of his positional sense and you can see that he's capable
01:01of playing deeper, he's capable of playing off the left, he can play off the right. He's outstanding
01:08and hopefully there's many more games to come from him because he's a real talent and he's a
01:14very intelligent footballer. I'm really surprised that he's not played higher because even at his
01:19age, people sometimes labour, he's 32 now, his legs are gone, we don't see many good performances
01:26from Sophie these days. I've read it all, I've seen it all but for me, he never lets his team
01:31down, never lets his team down and I knew he would take to that position really well. We've worked on
01:35it and I just felt with how they would set up, I just felt getting him on the ball and stepping
01:43into midfield and having the ability to have that range of passing and give us one or two
01:48different options, I thought he'd done that really well but defensively, he's so intelligent and
01:53that's what he brings. He's a really clever footballer and a really top-class footballer
01:58at that as well and we're lucky to have him. I think the club's been lucky to have him
02:02for as long as we have but there's life in him yet and there's plenty of good performances in him as well.