Ross County manager Malky Mackay thrilled by hard toil in Verona
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MALKY Mackay is confident the decision to forego friendly action at Ross County’s Italian training camp will reap rewards for the campaign ahead.
The Staggies flew home from the heat of their Verona base in the north of Italy on Saturday, reporting back to Victoria Park yesterday to re-acquaint themselves with the Scottish rain.
They face Brora Rangers at Dudgeon Park tomorrow evening in a pre-season friendly, just three days before squaring up to hosts Buckie Thistle in the Premier Sports League Cup group opener.
Alloa, East Fife and Dunfermline also await in a competition wrecked for County last summer by a mass Covid outbreak.
Manager Mackay took a calculated decision to focus all energies in Italy on heavy training work.
“We took the Brora game just to get a bit of football into us just before the League Cup group games begin,” the County boss said.
“I didn’t want to play games in Italy, I wanted 10 heavy training sessions in five days without the interruption of a friendly. These can end up being quite random, anyway in terms of usefulness.”
As well as the hard work, Mackay felt the Italian trip was hugely important in terms of squad bonding with seven new signings in situ.
“It was great – we had a really good week over there,” Mackay, who expects “one or two” more signings this summer, said. “The hotel and training facilities, the food and things like the pool, were all fantastic.
“It was nice and private and allowed us to get on with a lot of really good, hard work. From a squad integration perspective, it has been really important. It enabled our new group of players to come in and really get to know each other quickly, something we weren’t able to have last year while bringing in players over a longer period of time back in Scotland.
“I was pleased we managed to get the bulk of the transfer work done early and bring them to Italy.”
