St Mirren Football Club is pleased to confirm that Craig McLeish has been promoted to the role of First Team Transition Phase Head Coach.
Craig has been a vital part of the St Mirren Youth Academy in recent years, playing a major role in the development of young players like Evan Mooney, Fraser Taylor and Callum Penman. He takes on the new role following the departure of Peter Hartley who has returned to England to be closer to his family. We sincerely thank Peter for his efforts during his time at the club and wish him all the best for the future.
Craig will continue to support the St Mirren U19 squad’s development alongside Academy coach Marc Kelly, whilst also assisting manager Stephen Robinson and Brian Kerr with first team matters.
Speaking on his new role, Craig said: "I'm really excited about it.
"I'm grateful that the manager has given me the opportunity. I'm delighted that he's put faith in me to come up and bridge that gap between the academy and the first team.
"I think that the biggest part of the transition phase is to integrate the younger boys as much as possible and expose them to first team training. We'll obviously have the B team games or the KDM Cup games which are great for that integration as well.
We'll be doing a lot of work where younger players get to come over and do individual and unit work with the first team player. It’s about exposing them as much as possible so that over a period of time, more and more of the young players can start to make up the first team squad.
"I've been in and around the first team for over a season now, doing more work with them which has been great for my own development, but the skill set that I can bring is that knowledge of the young ones coming through, even probably some of the boys that the manager's not quite aware of because they're quite young. We can now start to fast track them and accelerate their development."
