Caley Thistle youngster Ryan Christie insists pre-season hype about his performances has not affected him.
Following a string of impressive friendly displays, the 19-year-old got his Scottish Premiership campaign off to a flier, netting Inverness’ second goal against Hamilton in their opening day 2-0 win at New Douglas Park on Saturday.
Christie has embraced his role in John Hughes’ side but says he is simply focused on Caley Jags’ next game at home against Dundee on Wednesday.
He said: “I’m feeling great, pre-season went really good for me. I didn’t have to do much for my goal on Saturday but it’s nice to get off to a good start. We can hopefully take that into the Dundee game on Wednesday and keep it going for the whole season.
“The manager and the players are always trying to keep my feet on the ground, so they won’t let me know about any of the hype. Right know I’m really enjoying the way we’re trying to play football and I’m really looking forward to the season.
“The plan was to start the season well. Since the start of the week everyone has been buzzing to get going and it’s a great start.
“We’ve been practising keeping the ball, and trying to keep it on the ground. All the work we’ve done in pre-season showed on Saturday, especially in the first-half, and it was good for it all to come together.”
Inverness’ win on Saturday came on an astroturf surface at New Douglas Park and Christie felt he and his team-mates adapted seamlessly to the change in surface.
He added: “A few of the boys were suggesting it was a big change. We trained on astroturf on Thursday and Friday to try and get used to it. It was always going to be different but we seemed to cope with it.
“I’m not sure if it helped us. We’ve played on a couple of them before and when it’s soaking wet it’s really good. It was harder on Saturday as the sun was out and it dried up quite quickly but we seemed to deal with it well.
“It’s going to be a long week. We’ll take it light in training and make sure everyone is fit going into Wednesday. We just have to take it one game at a time.
“We can’t be going into games thinking we need to save legs for the next game because we’ve got players like Aaron (Doran) and Marley (Watkins) who came off the bench on Saturday and were brilliant. That shows we’ve got players to come in and do a shift.”