It wasn’t so much a culture shock as a temperature shock when Ian Murray arrived in Oslo on January 5 back in 2016.
The now-Raith Rovers manager had not long left St Mirren after a difficult time there and received a call from a former Hibernian teammate.
Kevin Nicol, a Raith supporter and recently appointed manager of Mjøndalen in the Norwegian second tier, shared a Uefa Pro License with Murray after they were on the books together at Easter Road.
They lost contact over the years until Murray decided that a new challenge was in order and decided to become Nicol’s assistant at Asker.
‘What are you doing here?’
“It took a bit of time to adapt, arriving in minus 20 degrees!” Murray tells Courier Sport.
“You can imagine the first few days you’re thinking ‘what are you doing here?’.
“But once you get into it, it’s football. It’s a different country but you’re trying to do the same thing: improve players and win games.
“I can’t speak highly enough of the club I was at, Asker, and also the people that I met there who made me feel very welcome.”
Murray spent the best part of two years in Norway and had agreed to do a third year – but then Airdrie came calling.
He continues: “I had to make a decision: was my life going to be in Norway or was it going to be back home?
“My plan was always to come back to Scotland.”
Six-day week plan
As he was unveiled as Airdrie boss, Murray said he planned to implement some of the fresh ideas he’d picked up at Asker.
The thing that stood out the most in the Norweigian third tier was the amount of work part-time players are willing to put in.
“The boys wanted to play football six days a week,” adds Murray.
“If we didn’t give them recovery sessions or video analysis, they would come to us and ask us why – they wanted to learn, they wanted to be educated.
“I had come from part-time over here where our guys are three times. So they’re actually doubling their workload.
“They really wanted constructive criticism more than praise. They had a real hunger to improve – not just in football but in anything they did.”
Time off now ‘rare’
Murray took that six-day structure to the Excelsior and saw his Airdrie team improve year on year – culminating in a play-off final defeat and a move to Raith.
He is now putting that plan into action at Stark’s Park, with the side most recently recording a 3-2 win over league-leaders at the time Ayr United.
YESTERDAY'S GOALS (1/3) | 🎥 @KyleConnell9 scored his first goal for the Rovers with a lovely turn and finish to put us 1-0 up.
Full highlights can be viewed on the @RaithTV YouTube channel 👇https://t.co/ZbzgRtIOEm#IMaRover pic.twitter.com/Ee3ZpdvkFO
— Raith Rovers Football Club (@RaithRovers) September 18, 2022
“It takes time to implement these things,” Murray adds. “Whenever you come somewhere new and you try to implement new things you’re always going to get resistance.
“But that’s fine, you have to explain and that builds trust.
“But the way football is going at the top level, they will very rarely take time off now.”
As for Nicol, Murray still keeps in touch and spoke to him last week to congratulate him on the appointment.
They are always there for each other now to offer advice: “We speak regularly before games. We bounce ideas off each other.
“A fantastic guy, a fantastic coach and massively underrated – just because he’s out in Norway, he’s still a top-quality coach.”
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