Caley Thistle’s Scottish Cup-winning skipper Graeme Shinnie described how a key season in the Highlands transformed his career when he feared it was over before it had begun.
The 31-year-old former Inverness and Aberdeen captain is now at League 1 champions Wigan Athletic, as he aims to nail down a place in the now Championship side.
The six-time capped star was back in the Highlands at the weekend to be part of Aaron Doran’s testimonial night along with other Hampden heroes from when they lifted the cup in 2015.
Shinnie explained he will be forever grateful to the club and former boss Terry Butcher for showing faith in him when, as a young player, he recovered from a severe intestinal condition.
Rather than being shown the door in 2009/10 when the club dropped down from the Premiership for just one year, Shinnie was kept on despite the youth team being axed amid cost cuts.
Lifeline at Forres was turning point
A loan stint in the Highland League got him on track and the rest is history.
He said: “The year we were relegated, the youth team got scrapped, so I actually thought my time was up as a footballer. I thought my time was up.
“I was 16 at the time and Terry Butcher kept me and maybe four other players on. I was soon fast-tracked into the first-team, which helped me massively.
“Because the youth team was no longer there, I wasn’t playing any football, so that led me to a loan move at Forres Mechanics. That was a massive point in my career, for a young boy to play competitive football.
“I played a couple of (first-team) games with Caley Thistle (in 2009/10) and enjoyed the celebrations and promotion that season and really kicked on the year after that.
“I will always remember that time as it kept me in football and has helped me to reach where I’m now at.”
Play-offs need to be much fairer
Last month, Billy Dodds’ Caley Jags missed out on promotion when, after knocking out Partick and Arbroath, they fell to a 4-0 loss at St Johnstone, which was 6-2 on aggregate.
However, it was 0-0 at half-time in the second leg in Perth and Shinnie felt the never-been-done-before route of six ties for promotion needs to be looked at.
He said: “It’s a tough schedule in the play-offs in Scotland. They only lost out in the very last half of football in the sixth game of football.
“That goes to show it gives the Premiership side a real advantage. I watched the games and Caley Thistle did really well and it was a really unlucky way to miss out.
“In the first half of the second leg against St Johnstone, they were the better team before it went down to the last 45 minutes when St Johnstone’s experience showed.
“I would like to see it more like the play-offs down south and the lower leagues in Scotland.
“Maybe it should be the fourth-placed team against the Premiership’s 11th team, then second play third in the Championship before having a final. That would be a good spectacle.
“Caley Thistle did their very best and they will just need to use the defeat as a motivation. We lost the League Cup final in 2014 then went on to win the Scottish Cup the following season.
“The team can use that disappointment as their hunger for next season and try to get automatic promotion. Hopefully they can go one step further.”
‘Remarkable’ achievement in 2015
Shinnie explained what it meant to go all the way and lift the Scottish Cup seven years ago, knocking out Celtic in the semis before edging past Falkirk 2-1.
He added: “It was a strange scenario, because you went from going past Celtic as such underdogs to being massive favourites in the final against Falkirk. It was such a hard one.
“It was a season I will never forget. What this club achieved in such a short space of time, since being formed, was remarkable.
“We were not a massive club, so to do what we did in 2015 was unbelievable, so I will always remember it.”
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