Nairn County keeper Dylan MacLean remains hopeful the 2020-21 Highland League season is played to a finish.
The Wee County suffered a 7-1 Scottish Cup thrashing at the hands of League One outfit Montrose on Tuesday night, but MacLean hopes it won’t be their last game of the season.
County lost both of their opening games narrowly this term before the season came to an abrupt halt, and the number one is looking for a marked improvement.
The agile 25-year-old, who is in his seventh season with the Station Park club side, said: “I hope the Highland League goes ahead with the remainder of the season. I just want to get back to playing football.
“Of course, should that come to pass, we would have to go through another pre-season build-up, but that would be no problem.
“Hopefully we’ll be back playing again regularly, and get that first win, before too long.
“Over the last three months, I have been trying my hardest to keep fit.
“I really missed not having specialist training from our assistant manager and goalkeeping coach Michael Rae.”
Reflecting on the disappointing home cup defeat by Montrose, MacLean said: “We hadn’t played since Boxing Day and had only trained for the last two weeks, so it really didn’t come as a great surprise after three months without a game.
“However, we played some good football in parts, but we did give away some disappointing goals, especially their early opener when I was beaten at my near post.
“It really is unusual for me to be beaten at my front post (for the first goal) and I really should have been doing better there, and the same with their seventh goal, again from a near-post effort, which was hit like a bullet.
“It was a tough ask for us as Montrose were really sharp and were 3-0 up after only 25 minutes, but I thought we battled on right until the final whistle. On another night we could have scored another couple of goals.”
