More than 4,000 miles from his native Dundee, Kurt Herd is flying the flag for Scotland in international football. The 34-year old is manager of Dominica, the Caribbean island, making him the only Scottish manager currently leading an international men's side. Appointed permanently in August after a short-term stint, Herd's role is not exactly like the one held by Steve Clarke, or his successor, Sebastien Pocognoli, though.
Herd is not just Dominica's manager but effectively their analyst, scout, nutritionist, and yoga instructor rolled into one, given he is the only full-time staff member for the team. Including the players. At 34, Herd has already packed a lot in.
The former Dundee United academy coach has worked in Sweden, Australia, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan. He has met Arsene Wenger and other big football figures along the way and now his task is to improve the world's 182nd-best side, made up of largely amateur players from an island population of about 65,000. Most of Dominica's players play in their own domestic league, which Herd roughly equates to League 2 in Scotland.
While other Caribbean nations like Haiti and Curacao have made use of a lot overseas players to help them reach the World Cup, rules in Dominica limit them to having six. A rule change in January will allow Herd to start at least start recruiting players with Dominican grandparents. Former St Mirren and Livingston goalkeeper Shamal George, now at Bromley, is one Herd has been able to identify through social media and the use of talent-spotters.
I sit on Instagram for two or three hours and I'm just looking at player profiles, trying to see if somebody's got a little Dominica flag in that bio page, Herd says. I'm on the phone constantly. Whether that's scrolling social media - and it's not for fun - it's because I'm looking at players' profiles and databases.
I've got people that are doing that for me as well. I've got people in the US, Canada, Europe, UK, that their job for me is to contact clubs, contact agents, contact players, come back to me and tell me, yeah, coach, we've got one. And those guys have been absolutely priceless to me.
Recruitment is not the only tool Herd is deploying to try to raise the standards as Dominica compete in the Concacaf Nations League B this autumn. The squad are now performing yoga and other mindfulness techniques, while Herd is always re-enforcing dietary and sleep advice to the group to go with his team and one-to-one coaching. He even makes sure he is up running every morning and is never seen with a beer at night so he can try to set professional standards in view of his adopted community.
It's tough, to be honest - it's relentless, he admits. I'm doing everything at the minute. I'm the full-time member of staff, so it all falls on my shoulders.
Everybody else has got jobs. I've got one assistant coach that I work with, but he's a school teacher. Even now we're in camp, he's still working.
He's still trying to teach kids. I don't mind it because I feel like I need to control the situation for now because we're in a cycle of change. And it has to be me that drives that change.
And I have to show people why we're doing it and how we're doing it. Herd has been in Dominica for two years now, having worked with the youth sides before in his role as a talent coach with Fifa. He says he has fallen in love with the country and its people, who consider him one of them now.
Life on a beautiful Caribbean island is good, but Herd admits being obsessed with football means he cannot always fully enjoy the trappings that come with it.
Source: BBC Sport Football · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing