Buckie Thistle FC (3) vs Ross County XI (0) at Victoria Park, Buckie. Pre-season friendly 06/07/2019.
Picture: Daniel Forsyth. Image No.044378
THREE goals, a clean sheet and some key players getting minutes under their belt. Buckie Thistle’s first friendly saw them ease past a young Ross County side at Victoria Park on Saturday. The Jags have been working hard in pre-season and gave themselves an early boost with this performance. Two goals from Kevin Fraser and one from Scott Adams secured a 3-0 win against the visitors from Dingwall. First-team coach Frank McGettrick was in charge of team affairs with manager Graeme Stewart and assistant Lewis Mackinnon both on holiday. McGettrick said: “It was excellent. It was really good against a decent, sharp young Ross County side. The first 10 minutes you could see we were a bit rusty with it being the first game. “The boys have trained well. Their fitness is good and they have been training since June 11, Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday mornings and afternoons. “The manager, Spider, has them well shaped up and prepared. There have been good turnouts from all the boys. “We had a few of the boys back from injury and they looked good today. We had 20 players and everybody had to get a part of the game, so some boys played 45 minutes, others an hour. “Not losing a goal was important and Kieran Adams and Sam Morrison were excellent at the back. “We had a few young boys and two of them from last season’s under-17 team, Jay Flett and Sam Mair who have just come up, and two other local boys Liam Wood and Fergus Edwards. The young boys have been training well with the first team on a Tuesday night.” Kevin Fraser, Craig Cowie and Sam Urquhart all returned to action after long injury lay-offs last season and Ceiran Mclean also took part in the warm-up and could return next Saturday against Inverness Caley Thistle. “We scored some quality goals going forward with the likes of Andy Macaskill, Kevin Fraser and Scott Graham also did well. “I was really happy with the performance and not losing goals is a massive boost.” Lee Herbert played the full 90 minutes with Daniel Bell likely to play against ICT.