'I'm Actually Speechless!' - Stirling's Victor Peredo On Unbeaten Season
The Clan's Victor Peredo Reflects On A Stellar First Year As Head Coach And Preparations For The Play-Offs...
In September 2015, after 10 years of building that had led to consecutive National Championships in 2014 and 2015, the Stirling Clansmen’s legendary head coach Rob Orr stepped down. Facing the daunting task of filling those shoes was former defensive coordinator Victor Peredo.
A few months later, and the Clan are heading into the playoffs chasing a three-peat after an undefeated 8-0 season in which they once again ran away with the Premier North.
After a year of much change in Stirling, Peredo told us he was thrilled to see the results maintain such consistency.
“I’m actually speechless, I’m so proud of the guys who have been pulling the weight. We always go out on the field expecting to win, but I never thought it was going to be as successful as it has been, and hopefully it can continue.
“I worked with Rob for 10 years as his player and then a coach, so I learned a lot from him and now we’re pretty much running things the same way we always have over the last 10 years. The team is considerably different but the way we’ve always looked at things is that this is a process, so it keeps evolving a bit but it always works on the same work ethics.”
However, despite running up some high scores in the last few games, the Clan had a far from comfortable season. They started with a hairy 21-20 win over Derby at home, and in week 3 they pulled off an astonishing comeback at Durham, coming from 22-0 at half-time to win 30-28 (pictured above). It was arguably the turning point of the entire season for Stirling, and Victor pointed to it as his personal highlight.
“Durham have an amazing team right now, and the way the boys responded to being down by so many points, that was unbelievable. They’ve been completely committed, and they know that it’s not just what we do on the field that how we practice, and to see them apply that commitment was fantastic. It’s a cliché but we always say, ‘the most important play is the next play’, and try to forget when things go wrong. I’ve been trying to hold myself to the same idea as well: as with everything , things will sometimes go wrong, but we just keep going.”
The young coach, who hails from Mexico, made it clear that this year has been a true team effort.
“We are spreading the load: in previous years we had one or two guys that were our key players, and this time we’re fortunate to be able to spread that amongst different players. When we’ve got injuries, there’s always someone that has stepped up. Obviously we have our quarterback Andres Donat; he’s still leading things as he did last year, with a bit more experience, and our free safety Ashley Hopkins is another of our leaders, but we’ve got great rookies, we were very lucky with our rookies this year.”
“The Mood Is Good. We Are Just Focused, We Basically Consider This A New Season Starting Again."
Stirling’s strong season sets them up well for the post-season. Tomorrow will see them welcome Bath Killer Bees, who finished fourth in the Premier South, with 3 wins from 8. Lurking in the southern conference is the menace of the Birmingham Lions, four time champions and beaten by Stirling in the 2014 final, who are also 8-0. Victor insists the Scottish side are not thinking of the Lions yet.
“The mood is good. We are just focused, we basically consider this a new season starting again, and we’re just going to go with everything. Since the beginning of the season, the final game has been out of our thoughts. I’m not looking beyond tomorrow for now. Right now it’s all about Bath – I respect them as a really strong team, and we don’t know a lot about the southern division until we play them. Competition in the north was very strong this year, Derby, Durham and Loughborough have fantastic teams. Whatever we did over the regular season is for nothing if we lose now, and if we have a bad day that’s it. They are all strong teams that all have a shot.”