Monday 23 May 2016 08:23, UK
Kilmarnock boss Lee Clark revealed he took his players for a walk along the beach ahead of their emphatic play-off victory over Falkirk.
Kilmarnock lost Thursday's first leg 1-0 but ran out 4-0 winners on Sunday after goals from Miles Addison and Kris Boyd, and a double from Greg Kiltie.
And Clark felt his side were good value for their 4-1 aggregate win before revealing he adopted a very low-key approach to Sunday's second leg at Rugby Park.
"I'm proud of the players for delivering a performance like that under pressure," Clark said.
"We have been the better team in both legs, no doubt about it. It was a tough pill to swallow on Thursday. We would have been disappointed with 0-0, but when we got hit with the sucker punch it was tough to take.
"But we just relaxed them in the last two days. We knew the performance had been good enough so we needed the same again.
"We went for a walk along the beach at Troon towards the golf club on Saturday and had some bacon and egg rolls. We didn't train, we took them in the minibuses to Troon and thankfully the weather was nice."
But Clark did admit he still feared the consequences of failure.
"It was a huge result because I don't know what the implications would have been on the football side," he said.
"I know my own position was fine because I've started my recruitment already and I knew what I was doing with the squad before the two legs.
"But usually when clubs get relegated good people behind the scenes are the first to lose their positions. I take that personally as a manager because I don't want to see good people leave like that. So that's a big weight off my shoulders, the last few days have been tough."
The loss was only Falkirk's fifth in their 40-game promotion charge and manager Peter Houston refused to criticise his players following the defeat.
"I feel really sad we didn't put in a performance the fans deserved," Houston said.
"But over the course of the season they have seen plenty of performances that made them happy.
"Last year we got to the cup final, this year it's the play-off final, which I think it's a stride forward.
"We found out that we have to get better. Do we need to be more physical, have more pace? There's a few things we've learned."
