November 20th 2023
NOT good enough was how Nairn County manager Ronnie Sharp assessed his side's performance in the home defeat to Clachnacuddin. The influential Daniel MacLennan headed the visitors in front in a scrappy derby match before Jack Maclean crashed home an instant response by netting Gregg Main's free kick at the far post. MacLennan then won a penalty kick that was saved by Dylan Maclean with the young stopper denying Duncan Jones but four minutes from the end, MacLennan slipped in Michael Finnis, who rounded Maclean to roll home the winner. Sharp said: "Clach will be delighted with the three points and we are devastated. But I do not think we deserved anything because we were nowhere near good enough from start to finish." "I thought we were bullied all over the park strength-wise. The difference between the two teams was their centre forward Daniel MacLennan and our defenders just could not handle him because they were not strong enough or smart enough." "We were poor in the last third and going forward again. We have a problem in the last third of the park and overall, we have been going backwards over the last few games." "During the first half of the season, you could put it down to a lack of pre-season but I thought we would kick-on in the second half of the season and we are not. We need to have a look at ourselves – are they the right players for here? We are getting good performances out of two or three of them but out of the rest, no. We will need to have a look at it between now and the end of the season." Sharp is looking to go back to the drawing board to address a winless run which will now enter its third month. He said: "The ball kept coming back to us and we were under pressure all of the time. If we cannot hold the ball up then we are never going to get out and be able to play. Maybe we need to change the system again and start from scratch because we are not performing near to what we should be." "We have renewed the contracts of quite a few players but we have not kicked on. It seems to be that players are in a comfort zone with the performances we are getting. There was not that energy or skill-base tonight that we usually have. At the moment, we are not good enough and we are not going to accept this whether we are building for the future or not." Graeme Macleod
