Well travelled Henderson has promotion in mind for Thistle

Feb 19 2009 by Eric MacKinnon, West Lothian Courier

Well travelled Henderson has promotion in mind for Thistle

JIM HENDERSON may have had spells at three of the country’s biggest clubs but now his sole objective is to lead South Division leaders Armadale Thistle back up to the Premier League.

Hendo assisted current Birmingham boss Alex McLeish during a spell with Motherwell. At Hibernian he helped John Park who is now head of scouting at SPL champions Celtic.

And he has also helped out John Hughes’ promising youngsters at Falkirk.

Henderson is a well-known character in both junior and senior football circles and right now he is masterminding the Dale’s return to the second tier of the junior game.

He spent several years in the dugout at Harthill where he created a team with a never-say-die spirit.

And such was the camaraderie he created in the squad many of the Harthill players were keen to follow him to Armadale upon his switch.

The Dale were a footballing ship without a skipper when Jimmy McLaughlin retired and for them there was only one man for the job – Hendo.

When the charismatic boss arrived in his new port he immediately ran into rocky ground when he realised the club had only four signed players and just three weeks to find a squad capable of starting the season.

But fast forward seven months and he has steered the Dale into calm waters at the top of the league after a great start to their campaign.

Henderson said: “We’re delighted with the start we’ve had and if I’m honest we’ve done much better than we thought we would.

“At the start of the season there was no doubt we were up against it but we scouted around and signed the players we wanted.

“We’ve had such a good start that we must keep on pushing for, at least to be challenging for the one promotion spot on offer.

“But it is a very hard league and so big and there are a lot of good teams around and they will punish you if you let your standards drop.

“We have to keep pushing for the title although it is a poor reward for having a good season to find there’s only one promotion spot available.

“My only regret is that we have a poor record in cup competitions as we always enjoyed good cup runs in my time at Harthill and it always brought a different atmosphere to the place.

“We have a lot of experience at Armadale, and players like Robbie Feeney and Greg Burnett have both played with Dundee United, and keeper Bob Woods was on Livingston’s books.

“With experience like that we should be pushing hard for the title which would be a thank-you to the Armadale Committee for having faith in me.”