PICTURES: Deveronvale defeat Buchanhaven Hearts and captain Harry Noble looks ahead to the coming Highland League season
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Deveronvale picked up their fourth victory of their pre-season friendly schedule on Tuesday night.
Vale defeated north junior side Buchanhaven Hearts 3-0 at Princess Royal Park.
Young striker Cameron Angus netted the only goal of the first half with an 18th minute strike.
A penalty conversion by Harry Noble and a late counter by sub Kyle Mackillop-Hall sealed the win.
Captain Noble assessed his team's preparations for the 2023-24 Highland League season, which begins with a home clash against Keith on July 29.
He says experiencing a tough last campaign in the lower reaches of the table can help Vale’s young squad to come strong as a group this season.
The Banff side finished second bottom last term, well clear of basement boys Strathspey and just three points behind Lossiemouth three places above.
It gives Vale some scope for improvement this term and Noble has picked up on some encouraging signs in pre-season.
Four wins and a draw against junior opponents have produced enough positives for the skipper to believe some progress can be made it the year ahead.
“It really hasn’t been too bad. We won our first game against Islavale when as expected we were rusty in our first game back, sloppy in places and not picking the right passes,” he said.
“But in the games since we have been showing some good signs.”
Noble, the "old" head in Vale's defence at 27, will again look to marshal a defence with young players who have come through the Vale ranks. The Banff side's rearguard includes regulars like teenagers Jay Goldie and Jaydan Bradford, as well as the more experienced Innes McKay who is still only 22.
The signing of Jamie Tinnock, who naturally plays in Noble’s favoured left back position, gives the defence some added quality. And new signing from Fraserburgh, Jamie MacLellan has also shown up well, according to Noble.
Manager Craig Stewart has also recruited attacker Matty Petermann from Inverurie Locos.
"He’s a young one who has come in and I’ve been quite impressed with him. He’s not looked out of place, he’s played centre half and centre midfield in games, and in one or two games he played in both positions and I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far in Jamie.
"In the majority of teams you would consider us to be young but because we’ve been there a couple of years now the boys are experienced now. Now that they’ve got that experience they are only going to get better again.
“We are giving a chance to these young boys but at that age you need to get some experience and it’s important that any young player gets that. You are only going to get better playing football at a senior level.
“There’s such a big difference between Highland League and junior or even amateur football. So when players do make the step-up, they don’t know what they are going to be getting and that’s sometimes a good thing.
“Jamie Tinnock has been at Elgin for a fair amount of time and they are a level above so he’s training with better players and he’s obviously got a lot of quality that he can bring to Vale.
“He prefers left back as well and that’s the position where I have played a fair bit so it will help myself and help him as well. If I’m not playing well, Jamie is good enough to come in and play in that position."
Some are predicting another difficult campaign for Vale, but Noble hopes he can lead his team to victory in some of the closer games where they were shaded out last term.
"It was the same last year, people saying they thought we would struggle and that’s kind of how it ended up.
"We felt we were playing better than some of the results were suggesting but over the course of a season the table doesn't lie and we probably deserved to be down where we were. Now we are a year older, we’ve got to learn from our experiences last season and move on.
"During the season we didn’t score enough goals when we should have and we were conceding sloppy goals.
"Going into this season we know we aren’t going to win the league and we will look to the cups if we can get on a run. For me personally, I want to be higher up the league and to do that we have to be winning more games."
He hopes he won't need to do too much bawling and shouting as the most experienced man in his team's defence.
"You have to be vocal really, and one downside of having a young team is when these lads are not as vocal. We've got big Innes (McKay) who is also young but he is one of the more vocal boys in the team, so playing alongside him we are both trying to bark the orders out."
