Ross County manager Malky Mackay has no concerns over the Staggies’ lack of friendlies ahead of their first competitive game on Saturday.
County defeated Brora Rangers 4-1 on Wednesday, in their only warm-up match ahead of their Premier Sports Cup opener away to Buckie Thistle this weekend.
With Mackay having added eight new faces, the Staggies boss felt keeping the focus on squad bonding and warm weather training during last week’s camp in Italy outweighed the benefit of arranging extra bounce games.
Mackay said: “There’s a point where there’s a risk to actually playing a game and people getting injured because they have not been back long enough.
“There’s not enough weeks and we had to give them four weeks off after such a long, hard season.
“We were also trying to do business to get players in, having lost nine at the end of the season.
“It is not quite as much as last year, but not far off. We knew that six loans would leave us and we have three in at the moment.
“We’re then starting to build a squad that know each other.
“But what we’ve had to do this year is bring eight new players into the group who don’t know each other.
“The best thing for that is what we did, which is bring them back for a week and then take them away to our training camp in Italy.
“They were mixing with each other 24 hours a day and got some great work in.
“One of the downsides of playing matches abroad is you’re never quite sure what the standard will be, what standard of pitch you’ll play on – it can be so random.
“If you play games, you also miss training days while away.”
Competitive action will prepare Staggies for Premiership kick-off
The Staggies are heavy favourites to win Group C and advance to the last-16 of the competition, with League One side Dunfermline the only other full-time side in their section.
Mackay says the demands of competitive football will help to sharpen his side up for their Premiership opener away to Hearts on July 30.
He added: “It is a unique thing in Scotland. We were going to embrace that last year and we played Elgin before going into the cup.
“Then Covid struck us and it put us behind the eight ball for a couple of weeks.
“We have cup games coming up and we absolutely want to win every game and get through.
“At the same time, there’s a progression in it in terms of who we play as we work to get ready for Tynecastle.
“Buckie will be an absolutely competitive game, but another step forward in our preparations, before we face Dunfermline, Alloa and East Fife.”
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