Post Match Reaction: County Dominated Second Half
A five-star display at Rothes' MacKessack Park yielded three points for Les Fridge's Nairn County side on Saturday as they down the home side for the third time this season.
The visitors raced into an early two-goal lead thanks to a brace of Brian Macleod penalties as he netted his fourth and fifth goals in the last three games. But Rothes hauled themselves back into the game as they halved the deficit two minutes before the half-hour mark but the impressive Scott Graham restored Nairn's two-goal advantage when he volleyed home in the second half. Rothes could
Nairn manager Les Fridge spoke exclusively to Nairn County FC Online minutes after the full time whistle. He said: "It was a particularly good performance from us in the second half. I have been saying that the last five or six weeks where we got a good result against Fort William, played well away at Deveronvale and then again against Brora and Cove that we have been looking more like ourselves.
"The long lay-off we had for six or seven weeks is well documented and I definitely think it didn't help us."
He added: "I watched Clach here last week and they managed to win the game 4-3 so we knew it was going to be a difficult place to come.
"The game was a bit like last week where we got ourselves into a very comfortable position at 2-0 up but we stopped doing the good things and what we were getting joy from. So we had a chat with them at half time and I thought we dominated the second half scoring some really good goals."
The Rothes surface is notoriously heavy and sticky and this match was no different but County still managed to get the ball down and
Fridge added: "I thought Scotty Graham had a really good game. He got himself into the box for the two penalties which I thought were both definite penalties. He also took his own goal very well.
"Duncan Jones came on as sub and got forward and again scored a very good goal while Brian Macleod has got another two goals this week and Stephen Skinner scored from a corner so we had a variety of scorers and I thought we dominated the second half."
Fridge altered his tactics slightly for the Cove game last week as he switched to a four-man defence and his side have looked solid at the back as a result. But the manager does not feel this is entirely responsible for the recent upsurge in form. He said: "We were forced to go to four at the back against Brora when we were down to nine men and I said after we got beat by Clach in February that we would try various things and so far we have done that. It just depends on who we're playing and it depends on if the personnel give me the opportunity to try things. We have gone to a back four though the last few weeks and we'll wait and see whether we stick with that."