2 hours ago
RONNIE Sharp was satisfied with what he saw at Station Park this afternoon as Nairn County were given a stern workout by Inverness Athletic in a competitive friendly. Gary Kerr opened the scoring just before half time with Gregg Main stroking home a penalty shortly after the restart. Jordan Macrae notched a late double for Nairn to wrap up a 4-0 success. Sharp said: "We took the game on to keep the boys ticking over. The football was good enough, although we missed some chances. The main thing was to give everybody a game and to get everyone in the squad up to speed." "Everyone who was here today played at least 45 minutes and that was the main thing – the scoreline was irrelevant. It was a game to keep everyone in the sequence of training on Tuesday and Thursday nights with a game to look forward to on the Saturday." Youngsters Callum Ednie and Dylan Mackenzie all appeared with Fraser Wilkie handed a debut in goal midway through the second half. Sharp added: "Callum came in for a start and I thought he did really well. He has not really been involved since he started on the first day of the season, when he also picked up an injury. He got a good 45 minutes under his belt and it was the same for Dylan Mackenzie. Ross Naismith came in as well after not being involved lately and it was good for him to play another game. Young Fraser Wilkie made his debut for us too and getting players like this some game time was what today was all about." Nairn had to lend goalkeeper Ryan Macleod to the visitors with them missing their regular stopper and the young County custodian excelled for the North Caledonian League outfit. "Ryan was terrific,"Sharp stated. "He made a number of superb stops for them and it helped to keep the score down." "We were getting into the right positions in the first half and we had a few headers from good positions that we should have done better from. It was the same in the second half when we were through one-on-one a few times but Ryan did really well in goal." "We made chances all of the time but on a day like today, you could argue it is maybe a good thing that we did not take them all because it meant that the score line was always close, so we had to keep the tempo up whereas we could have dropped our levels if we got ourselves a healthy lead early on." Macrae's late double saw him follow on from his goal-scoring appearances at Wick Academy and Strathspey Thistle in recent week. Sharp revealed: "Jordan is already claiming that today's goals count to take him on to four in the last three games! But it will do his confidence good to keep his run of goals going and scoring is a good habit to get into." Graeme Macleod
