Caithness set for 'another season of consolidation' in Caley 1
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League rugby returns for the Greens on Saturday when they hit the road to face a testing opener against newly promoted Moray.
Last year's Caley 2 champions completed their preparations with an epic 52-49 win in a friendly against National Division 4 visitors Whitecraigs last Saturday.
Caithness, meanwhile, went down 45-28 to Caley 2 outfit Ross Sutherland in a tussle where their defensive frailties were again starkly exposed.
Looking to the coming Caley 1 campaign, Caithness coach Kenny Russell has reined in expectations, dubbing it "another season of consolidation".
"It's going to be another year of bedding in the large group of youngsters we have," he said. "We need to get them battle-hardened and used to the rigours of regular training and making themselves available to play week in, week out."
The Greens finished fifth last term and Russell has set his sights on keeping their place in the pecking order of the newly rejigged league set-up.
"I guess we're looking at another season of transition and development," he said.
Saturday's tussle in Invergordon played out not dissimilarly to their 52-14 loss in Kirkwall against Orkney the previous week.
"Once again, we pretty well gifted them a couple of early tries," he said.
"As a team, we defended better than we did against Orkney. We were a lot wider and made it difficult for them to outflank us.
"But our line speed was still an issue and I counted 67 tackles we missed in total – more than 50 in the first half."
He said his side also regularly fell foul of the referee in his interpretation of the new clampdown on high tackles.
"He called about 20 against us and it definitely made the game more stop-start," Russell said. "It was quite often our second tackler who was getting pinged.
"Different refs have different interpretations and it is definitely going to be an issue this season."
Russell was impressed by the threat his side posed in attack.
"With the ball, we looked good but we obviously just can't afford to be missing so many one-on-one tackles," he said.
Try-scorers for the Greens were hooker Calum Hill, full-back Scott Webster, lock Kevin Budge and flanker Sinclair Bremner, with fly-half Jamie Mowat converting all four.
The visitors were disrupted by a hand injury to scrum-half Euan MacDonald.
