Jags a thorn in the Rose

The first ever meeting between The Caley Jags and the Rose was played out during a thunderstorm. Torrential rain of biblical proportions fell half an hour before kick-off and that dampened the grass somewhat. Inverness were quick off the mark and opened the scoring after four minutes when Aaron Doran took advantage of a defensive error to score from ten yards. No pun intended, but the floodgates never opened as Inverness made heavy weather of the next thirty-five minutes before Doran curled in his second of the game from just outside the box. What a beauty! 

HALF TIME 2-0

Big chance right at the start of the second half for Rose but Cammy Mackay saves with his feet from Smart to deny the visitors who are far from out of this tie. A raft of substitutions on the hour saw the hosts tighten their grip on proceedings as the heavens opened once more with Billy Mckay and Austin Samuels passing on great opportunities. Doran also denied his hat-trick by Martin's reflex save. Keiran McGackie headed home in the 90th minute following a set piece but it was too little too late for the Rose who gave a good account of themselves as Inverness fiddled with their line-up.

FULL TIME : 2-1

First impressions from Robert on CTO: Underwhelmed by that. We always tried to play it out from the back, rarely with success.

The early goal, a great finish by Doran, should have been a springboard but after his second goal, also a good finish, we did not deserve to be two up at half time.

Bonnyrigg had a goal disallowed for a foul in the box, with a different ref they could have had a penalty, and MacKay had to race out of his box at one point to prevent a goal.

I actually thought we were better in the second half as we moved the ball faster at times, but we couldn’t finish the chances we created and I couldn’t grudge the late goal.

Of the new players, Brooks was quiet, and was playing wide left before being subbed. Gilmour could become an asset, but got an unnecessary booking. Davidson was trying to get forward after he came on and linked with Shaw a few times.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt as they’ve only been back for two weeks but that was a poor performance.

Doran the stand out, with Shaw looking the best of the rest.

Tongue in cheek, maybe we’d have done better if we played hoofball!!

The other game in group E finished Airdrie 2-0 Dumbarton. Late goals from Nikolay Todorov and Lewis McGregor settled this tie.

More match reaction to follow...

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