When Kris Doolan left Partick Thistle as a player, he was infamously denied the sort of send-off that would have been fitting for a man of such stature at the club. He knew though that when the axe fell on him at Firhill as a manager, there would be no fanfare.
“That's the way it is as a manager,” Doolan shrugs.
“It's so cutthroat that you're out the door, and that's it.”
The circumstances of both exits were painful though for the former Thistle striker, who scored 121 goals for the club during a distinguished decade of service in the red and yellow.
His departure as manager perhaps smarted all the more as he felt he was fulfilling his job remit, particularly when you factor in the various constraints that he was working under, leaving him feeling not so much as though he was operating with one hand tied behind his back, but that his board were lopping his team’s chances of promotion off at the knees.
“Obviously, it’s not nice when you have to leave the club that you really love,” he said.
“But I also know the way it works. The only thing that I would say is that we were still in the play-off position. That was what I was tasked with doing, taking the team into the play-offs. And then when you get sacked when you're still in that position, it's like, ‘Hmm, that's a wee bit strange’.
“But I also understand how football works. I know that boards make decisions and that's that. So, I'll just move on.
“I think in the two years we were there, we did a really good job. It's not as if we've done a poor job, in my opinion. We had a 44 percent win rate in The Championship, which is, for anybody, something to be proud of. Because it's a difficult, difficult league. Really difficult.
“But look, naturally, I'm gutted that we've been moved on. But it's a fresh start. And all the experience that I've got and all the things I've learned in that time, I'll take into the next job.”
All that being said, Doolan acknowledges that his team were performing below the level they had previously shown, when they so narrowly lost out in the playoffs on penalties in the previous two seasons.
“I wouldn’t be looking for excuses,” he said.
“We were poor. We had poor results through January. But I think January was the real turning point, if I'm honest.
“We moved so many players out. The club was clawing back money everywhere. And we lost, I think, players who were vital. We lost Myles Roberts, who was probably the best goalie in The Championship. We lost Harry Milne, one of the best full backs in the division. And then we weren’t bringing people in to replace them.
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“When you move so many players out, you're doing that to free up money which was always in the budget. And then, honestly, there's nothing to spend, even though you're freeing up money.
“That makes it difficult for anybody. And I think at that point, you can see what's happening. You get a wee feeling as to what's going on.
“But I still think when you're in the play-off position…if we'd slipped out the play-offs and finished there, I would have walked away. Because I would have saved the club money. My salary would have then gone back to the club, because I hadn't fulfilled what I was tasked to do in terms of getting to the play-offs.
“But we were six points clear in the play-offs, albeit, admittedly, we weren’t in great form.
“I think I've shown over the last couple of years that I know how to make play-offs and how to navigate the play-offs as best as we can. So, from that point of view, I think it's strange for any manager to lose their job while you're still in a play-off position.
“But, like I said, I also understand that the club were terrified if they were to fall out the play-off position and you lose another bit of money, because you're already losing money and there's a lot of clawing money back.
“That's obviously been a big part of their decision. It's football. I'm not a wee boy. I've been around a long time, so I know how it works.
“And, like I said, you just have to brush yourself down and get ready to move on.”
When Doolan took on the Thistle job after the departure of his close friend Ian McCall, part of the motivation driving him was an obligation to his predecessor.
“I was always going to help, so naturally, that's what I did,” he said.
“I took over a really good squad from Ian. I wanted to do a good job for him because he brought me to the club. We're friends. We're close. I just wanted to stabilise things for him because he's just lost his job, which obviously I've just done now. It's not nice. It's never good for anybody.
“From then on, the next year, the club cut the budget by a lot, and we finished third. We finished a position higher than we did the previous year. With a lot less money. Hundreds of thousands of pounds less.
“I think the club's always, you know what it's like, it's up and down. There's been a lot of change on and off the pitch. There's always a lot to change.
“I suppose it isn't always helpful. You need to be a bit more sort of stable behind the scenes. I think you need to make sure that the football side can actually focus solely on that.
“When I came in, there was a lot of turmoil. Never mind the fact that I had just come back to the club as the under-18 manager a month before. I was just back in and all of a sudden, the manager was leaving. When I came in, I just tried to make sure I stabilised things. It's about showing leadership. It's about showing discipline.
“Also, I wanted to bring that style of play, which I think we did. I think you could see that. I think you just look at the two play-offs, the playoff final and the semi-final we got to, the type of football, the entertaining football we played.
“It was important to me because it was something that I wanted to introduce to the club as well and reinforce and make sure that we got as many fans back as we could. I think you were seeing that, you see crowds now are better than they were.
“Hopefully, that continues because it's such a great club and the fans want to be entertained. This year, like I said, it was a mixed bag before I left, but overall, we improved results.
“I don't really want to point to any excuses, I know you still have to win.”
If Doolan felt a duty to his predecessor and had warm words about the squad that was left to him, the same perhaps couldn’t be said for interim manager Brian Graham, who raised some eyebrows shortly after his appointment by criticising the fitness of the players his former boss had been coaching.
How did that sit with Doolan?
“I think it's just one of those things,” he said, diplomatically.
“It’s probably the one thing that a lot of managers will go in and say.
“I just think it's one of these throwaway comments, honestly, that every manager tends to say because they think it's not measurable by the fans. If you win a game, that's one of the things you might say, that the players are fitter.
“If you're winning games, everybody thinks the players look fast, they look sharp, they look fit. If they're not winning games, it's because they're not fit.
“I didn't take it to heart. I think I actually saw Mark Wilson come out after one of the games, it was maybe the very next game, he was asked the same question and he said the complete opposite, that the players are sharp, they are fit. It's just a throwaway comment.
“To me, there's nothing in it. It's just one of these things that new managers tend to say.”
If Doolan was himself a rookie boss when he took the reins at Thistle, the ups and downs of his two-year spell in the Firhill dugout now have him feeling like a grizzled veteran.
From the drama and heartbreak of Dingwall and all that, to the semi-final playoff defeat the following season to Raith Rovers, and everything in between, it certainly wasn’t dull.
And he feels the full gamut of emotions he ran and the spectrum of experiences he has lived through will serve him well for whatever comes next.
“I think, in the two years, I've probably been through the lot,” he said.
“There was so much happening in those two years that I feel as if I could go on to the next job as an even better manager than I was when I first started.
“You go through so many ups and downs that you learn from it. And some of the warning signs as well, what to look out for, I'll definitely be a bit more aware of moving on to the next job anyway.
“I think I'm quite good at boxing things off and moving on. I think you have to be, as a football player, as a coach and a manager, there’s no point dwelling on it. You can’t always be looking backwards. I'm probably the type of person to keep looking forward.
“Obviously, any time you think about being 20 minutes away for the Premiership, that is difficult. That was a tough day.
"There was fatigue from the players. We all know the play-offs are nigh on impossible to get through from the position we were in. It's never been done. I felt we were probably playing the best football the club's seen in a while during that spell. And we almost got there.
“But the players just fatigued in the last part of the game. The physicality as well of Ross County and the players that they could bring on, they were fresh. That kind of physicality really caused us issues.
“And then our boys were just tiring so badly and making mistakes that they wouldn't normally make.
"To pick the team and the club up from that and to finish third the next season is, I think, something that we can be really proud of.
“It’s not as if we scraped about the bottom of the league. We challenged for promotion in the two years we were there. So, loads of lessons in there, and loads of things to be proud of. We’ll see what comes next.
“As for Thistle, we'll make the play-offs, I would think. We should do. And hopefully we'll do well.
“I’ll be rooting for the team.”
For Doolan, it seems, Thistle will always be 'we', no matter what.
