December 27th 2024
The number of players who have turned out for both sides in this evening’s pre-season friendly match at Station Park is endless as we welcome our near neighbours, Inverness CT, for both club’s second summer runout.
We had chosen to focus on the recent past, looking at the players who are likely to be on show against their former club this evening.
Looking at the Inverness squad which took on Clachnacuddin at the weekend, there were a number of Nairn connections within the Caley Jags ranks.
Starting on the left hand side of the defence for Duncan Ferguson’s men was Matthew Strachan, who has had two loan spells with us over the past two seasons.
He featured eight times for us after joining at the end of February 2023, scoring once in the 2-0 home win over Huntly. Matthew then returned to Station Park for a second loan spell exactly a year later, this time making eight appearances up to the end of the season in April.
Another one of our former loanees made it on the score sheet for ICT in that 2-0 win at Clachnacuddin on Saturday.
Calum Mackay came off the bench to grab the second goal and seal the victory for the visitors to Grant Street Park.
Calum is the son of our former player, Karl, who featured for us in the 1990s and has a number of other family connections to Nairn. He made 23 appearances for us last season after joining on loan in October, scoring in the 3-3 draw with Banks O’Dee in December and the 4-0 win away at Strathspey Thistle in March.
Jack Walker and Shae Keogh are two youngsters from Nairn who were in the Inverness squad for that match on Saturday, with defender Jack playing from the start while midfielder Shae appeared from the bench.
Jack is the grandson of our former manager, Jim and is the son of Lee, who played as a centre half for us in the late 1990s. Jack made his own name for himself in Highland League last season during an impressive loan spell at Forres Mechanics while Shae has started to break through into the Caley Jags’ first team despite still being young enough for Under-18s football.
Both went to school at Nairn Academy and have been in the Inverness CT development programme from a young age.
On our side, a number of players and staff will be pitting their wits against their former club, none more so than our Manager, Ross Tokely, who played a record 589 games for Inverness CT over 16 years from 1997, helping the Caley Jags through all of the Scottish Leagues.
Jamie Carnihan, Callum Maclean, Harry Hennem, Ben Barron, Andrew Greig, Kenny MacInnes, Gussie Dey, Josh Stephenson, Lewis Munro, Kenny McKenzie, and most recently, Jonathan Bain can all count tonight’s opponents among their former clubs.
Tonight’s match kicks off at 7.30 pm and tickets are available here in advance: https://app.fanbaseclub.com/Fan/Tickets/SelectType?fixtureId=5930
