'I want to make serious changes here at Tayport' - boss Daryl McKenzie opens up his goals at Canniepairt

McKenzie, previously player/boss at Broughty Athletic and Forfar West End, joined the club in the summer, taking over from Eddie Wolecki Black.

The Port are currently marooned in mid-table in McBookie East Region Midlands League after 19 matches played, sitting on 32 points, 17 away from top spot.

"I am a local guy and I have watched Tayport all my life,” McKenzie told the Fife Herald. “I have played against them many times.

“From the outside looking in, the club are really big in terms of the local area and what is close by.

“What drew me into the job was how well the club are being run off the park.

“Getting their Scottish Football Association licence, getting the floodlights up and running, building new changing rooms, the footing of the club is in a good place, but I think, even openly, the folk on the committee would admit that they took their eye off the ball in terms of the footballing side of things.

“The club relied on one or two individuals to pull everything together.

“In the summer, the first friendly of the season had to be cancelled due to a lack of players signed up.”

The Dundee United youth coach added: “We have been active in the market. When I came into the club in July, the state of play wasn’t great, in all honesty. We had a handful of players going into the start of the season and we had to beg, borrow and steal to an extent.

“With that comes a lot of change throughout the campaign as you try to bring in what you really want. We’ve done okay so far with the squad we have but I have made no secret about the fact that I want to make serious changes here at Tayport.

“Hopefully, new signings Arran Leiper and Tristan Baxter will be the start of a decent couple of weeks for us in terms of incomings. I’d like to bring in another two players with the caveat of some leaving.”

Tayport will be hoping to beat the weather this weekend with a home fixture against Letham, who they could leapfrog by winning on Saturday afternoon.

It has been a difficult period for the side, with last weekend’s game being called off, adding to an already-sparse period without many fixtures.

McKenzie explained: “Our last game previous to the Forfar West End match was on the 17th of December, so it has been very much stop-start. We had two friendlies cancelled over the festive period.

“After the Forfar match, we were hoping to finally build some momentum, but it was quickly made impossible by Sautrday’s game at Scone being called off.

“It has been a really hard time for us because we have had a fair bit of player movement over the past couple of months and they haven’t had a chance to build any sort of understanding yet with each other.

“The idea of the friendlies was to give guys a chance to play alongside each other.”