December 5th 2023
BIRTHDAY boy Ronnie Sharp saw his players serve up the ideal present to mark the gaffer's 52nd birthday as they put reigning Highland League champions Buckie Thistle to the sword at Station Park. The 4-1 County win saw them gain a measure of revenge for Buckie's 8-3 victory at the same venue at the start of last season when Nairn were still putting a team together and saw Sharp's men make it back-to-back victories over the Jags have succeeded 3-2 at their Victoria Park in August. Sharp said: "I thought we were excellent from the first whistle to the end. It is the best start we have had to a game in weeks – we have been conceding goals in games but this time we scored early on. That gave us the confidence and we should have been more up at half time as we had two or three really good chances but we never took them. I cannot fault the player though as the effort was there from the off, which was great." Sharp has seen his side hit a recent run of games against clubs on a similar number of points in the table but coming into their meeting with County in fine form. He added; "Over the last five or six games, we have been behind all of the time and we have been gifting goals but we looked a lot more solid today. We are getting players back and the players who have come back recently are getting fitter with all of the boys from the goalkeeper right through the team training properly for a full week. We worked hard this week and it paid dividends." After Gary Kerr flashed in a header to break the deadlock two minutes in, top scorer Jordan MacRae made it 12 for the season just three minutes into the second half. Sharp said: "It was another good run by Jordan and a good save by the goalkeeper initially but he had the composure to put it in which was great because it gave us more confidence to go on and score more, which we did." "Gary scored the third for us and it has taken him a while to come back to full fitness as he missed all of the pre-season training but he has come back and is probably getting up towards peak fitness now, which is helping. We also have boys like Dylan Mackenzie who can come off the bench and give us something extra." "Kenny McKenzie is back for us as well now and he played out of position at the back but I thought he was excellent alongside Glenn Main – they were both good together." County's final goal saw Jack Maclean net his second against Buckie of the season with the wide player having also netted in Nairn's August win at Victoria Park. Sharp revealed: "Jack is trying to claim it was an overhead kick from a yard out but he is always in the box trying to score goals." "The only disappointment was not getting a clean sheet but if you were to say to us before kick-off that we would win 4-1 then we would have taken that. We have had boys out but hopefully we are getting them all back now." Graeme Macleod
