FORT William boss Danny Conlon is casting the net far and wide to bolster his beleaguered squad – with a striker top of his wanted list.
A weakened squad conceded three late goals on Saturday as they slid to a 5-0 Highland League defeat at Turriff United.
Again, a number of players were unavailable – so much so that seven in his 16-man squad had never played at this level before.
Conlon was lifted, however, by the performance of his core players, who made the game a contest for as long as possible until tiredness kicked in.
Gary Harris and Michael Taylor notched doubles and experienced striker Jerry O’Driscoll finished off the job for Turriff,.
Now Conlon is eager to see new faces in the closing months of the campaign.
He said: "Seven of the squad had never kicked a ball in the Highland League, but we competed reasonably well until the legs started to go in the last 10 minutes, which you can understand. All three of those late goals came through deflections, which summed the day up.
"Before the game, I was quite downhearted because of two call-offs on Friday night and one on Saturday morning, but six of the players are those who always turn up for games and never miss training and those are the ones I will be building the team around.
"We have a foundation and what we need now are the players to fit around those already in the team. That’s why we’ve been looking at two trialists from Skye and we’re looking to bring in players from anywhere. The net is being cast wide, including Oban and Inverness.
"We did give the local lads the chance first, but we now need to look outwith this area to bring in more players. What we really need is to add more firepower to the team. At 2-0 down, we did create one or two chances, but we need goalscorers and that’s what we’re working on.
"We actually done well to get a squad of 16 to go to Turriff, but you have to consider we also have five players out with long-term injuries and the Ellis cousins, Michael and Sean, have now left for Australia, so we’re down to the bare bones."
This weekend, Claggan Park is the venue for a league encounter between Fort and Nairn County, who have not played since early January.
Conlon said: "Les (Fridge, Nairn manager) will want his side to get a good 90 minutes under their belt. They are a very good footballing side, but we did well at Nairn, only losing 2-0 in October, although at times we struggled to contain them."
