County defeated Brora Rangers 4-1 on Wednesday, of their solely warm-up match forward of their Premier Sports activities Cup opener away to Buckie Thistle this weekend.
With Mackay having added eight new faces, the Staggies boss felt retaining the give attention to squad bonding and heat climate coaching throughout final week’s camp in Italy outweighed the good thing about arranging additional bounce video games.
Ross County supervisor Malky Mackay has no considerations over the Staggies’ lack of friendlies forward of their first aggressive sport on Saturday.
Mackay mentioned: “There’s a degree the place there’s a threat to truly enjoying a sport and folks getting injured as a result of they haven’t been again lengthy sufficient.
“There’s not sufficient weeks and we needed to give them 4 weeks off after such a protracted, exhausting season.
“We had been additionally making an attempt to do enterprise to get gamers in, having misplaced 9 on the finish of the season.
“It isn’t fairly as a lot as final yr, however not far off. We knew that six loans would go away us and now we have three in in the mean time.
“We’re then beginning to construct a squad that know one another.
“However what we’ve had to do that yr is deliver eight new gamers into the group who don’t know one another.
“The most effective factor for that’s what we did, which is deliver them again for per week after which take them away to our coaching camp in Italy.
“They had been mixing with one another 24 hours a day and obtained some nice work in.
“One of many downsides of enjoying matches overseas is you’re by no means fairly positive what the usual will probably be, what commonplace of pitch you’ll play on – it may be so random.
“For those who play video games, you additionally miss coaching days whereas away.”
The Staggies are heavy favourites to win Group C and advance to the last-16 of the competitors, with League One facet Dunfermline the one different full-time facet of their part.
Mackay says the calls for of aggressive soccer will assist to sharpen his facet up for his or her Premiership opener away to Hearts on July 30.
