Burntisland Shipyard gaffer Lee Richardson bemoans huge injury list in 'nightmare' season

Stalwarts including captain Ian Millar, top scorer Ben Anthony, goalkeeper Scott Costello and centre-back Kearyn Hicks were all missing for prolonged periods during a frustrating campaign which saw Shippy finish 13th in the East of Scotland Football League second division on 32 points, after recording nine wins, five draws and 16 losses from their 30 league fixtures.

“It was a disappointing season,” Richardson told the Fife Free Press. “With the players that we had, we should have been a lot higher up in the league.

"But a combination of a lot of really bad injuries and certain players not being there due to work commitments and various things kind of knackered us.

"I’ve been a manager for 16 years and I’ve never been at a team where we’ve had so many serious injuries in one season. It was a strange situation.

"I was only able to pick the same team twice. It’s been a nightmare.

"From Christmas onwards, that’s when we started to struggle.

"If you look at results before that, we’d done not too bad.

"Both my goalies got injured so for the last seven or eight games I never had a goalkeeper and we had to get a youngster in from East Fife under-20s – Cole Miller – who did great, but he’s now signed for Kelty under-20s.

“My captain Ian did his ankle and has been out for three months and my centre-half Kearyn got injuries to both his knees during the season.

"And Ben was out for a while after getting a bad ankle injury through at Edinburgh South when the keeper cleaned him out. To be honest, Ben’s still not recovered from that.

"Ben would get a game for any team in our league and probably the league above.

"He’s got pace to burn, he’s experienced, he was at Cowdenbeath as a youngster and he’s been at Hill of Beath, Dundonald and St Andrews, he’s a top player.”

The injury crisis meant Richardson had to introduce players from the club’s youth set-up.

He added: "I got a lot of help from our under-17s team. Every week I was at their manager Steven Sharp to see if I could get hold of players.”