Haddington Athletic boss hopes medals will join meat pies at Millfield Park

Scotch pie puff pastry put Haddington Athletic on the Scottish football map this week after their meat-filled feature on BBC Scotland’s ‘A View from the Terrace’ last Friday.

Picture: John Devlin

Millfield Park boss Scott Bonnar hopes this season will be remembered for medals rather than mutton, as his side have their sights set on league and Scottish Cup glory.

The Hi-Hi are flying at the top end of the East of Scotland 1st Division Conference A after an unbeaten 15-game start to the campaign, while they also have a Scottish Cup second round tie away to Brechin City on the horizon later this month.

“The boys are buzzing for every game, it doesn’t matter who we are playing,” said Bonnar who took over from Joe Hamill in July. “The only thing different is our opponents’ strips. We’ve got Tweedmouth at home on Saturday, then Leith in a cup game and then the big one away to Brechin which we are all looking forward to. It’s an exciting period for us.

“When I first came in it was sort of graded against who you are playing against, if we play Bonnyrigg it’s alright to get beat 2-0, if we played someone around us, you were maybe expected to win, but it didn’t really matter and if you played a team below you should be hammering them. I tried to get that message across to the players that we’ve got to respect every team we play, treat everyone the same, so every game is a big game.”

The focus is just on continuing to win every game for Bonnar and his assistant, Ryan Grant, which will ensure the crowds keep flowing through the Millfield gates.

Bonnar added: “It’s us and Leith at the top at the moment but anything can happen. Leith have done brilliant; they keep winning and you’ve got to take your hat off to them and respect everything that they are doing. Leith are the favourites and we’ve got to try and keep pace with them, we’ll hang on to their coat tails and see how far it goes.

“When I first went you were lucky if there 40 or 50 people there, and against Dunbar (last month) there was 400 odd there, that helps if you are winning so we’ll need to keep doing that.”

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