Clachnacuddin have to learn lessons from naive defeat to Buckie Thistle in Highland League, says manager Jordan MacDonald
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Jordan MacDonald is confident Clach will learn from Saturday’s second half adversity after “naivety” cost them heavily against Highland League big-hitters Buckie Thistle.
Clach led through an early Robbie Thompson goal and went in at 1–1 at the break after Kyle MacLeod’s reply. The title-challenging hosts could count themselves fortunate to see two strong penalty claims waved away, with some excellent Lilywhites’ passing and movement creating decent chances.
The young Inverness outfit were sunk inside a 20-minute spell in the second half as Sam Urquhart struck twice, the second from a hotly-disputed penalty kick award, either side of a Scott Adams finish.
Manager MacDonald said: “I’ll never question these lads – they’ve been unbelievable for us since we came in the door. They’ll learn from Saturday.
“The players were majorly disappointed coming off the park. We go again. It is a learning experience and they’ve played another one of the top teams. They’ve seen what we need to try to do to get to where we want to be.
“It will stand us in good stead in the future, but it is still a sore one for us to take. We’ll look at it and see where we can improve in avoiding giving away cheap goals, but for 45 minutes we played some excellent stuff.
“We got the ball down, passed it and moved it. There are wee things we need to tweak, but we can sort it so that’s what we will do.”
Clach will regroup this week in training and focus fully on another tough league test this weekend away to Inverurie Locos.
Before then, though, MacDonald was still getting some of his frustration from Saturday out of his system, and he stressed: “It was a very good first half. We missed a couple of great chances and there were two stonewall penalties we never got.
“If you give a good team like Buckie opportunities they’re going to punish you. They did that. It was naive defending from us, for the second and third goals especially.
“The fourth goal was never a penalty in a million years. How can a goalkeeper punching the ball and then colliding with a striker be given as a penalty?”
