Fraser found his feet under Lennon but is now eager to boot him out!
IT’S scant consolation but Hibernina’s European exit at least spares Neil Lennon the challenge of juggling a Thursday-Sunday match schedule. Marcus Fraser suspects the Easter Road boss would have coped. The Ross County captain owes his big break to Lennon’s ability to improvise in the face of a stretched squad, yet today he hopes to take advantage of tired minds and bodies after a 3-0 defeat to Molde sent the Edinburgh club tumbling out of the Europa League.
Ask Fraser to list his career highlights and he’ll give you two grandstand moments.
Most obvious is the day Ross County beat Hibs to lift the League Cup in 2016 but he also cherishes the memory of his unexpected senior debut for Celtic.
Fraser was just 17 when an injury to Glenn Loovens saw him pitched into a Europa League group fixture against Rennes as a half-time substitute. The youngster impressed as Celtic secured a 3-1 victory.
‘It was sink or swim for me that night,’ admitted Fraser. ‘I didn’t have any time to think about it. It was just shinguards and strip on, then away you go!
‘Everything happened so quickly, so thankfully I didn’t have time to get nervous. The manager just told me to go out and do what he had seen me do. There was no pressure on me.
‘It’s something that can never be taken away from me. I’ve played in a European game for Celtic and it’s something people still talk about to this day.
‘Put that alongside the cup win and that’s two big achievements. But you can’t always look back. The challenge is to keep pushing forward as we’ve found out.’
In Dingwall, the locals recall County’s cup win of March 2016 fondly. Unfortunately, the club’s subsequent demise looms larger and more painfully in the memory banks.
Chairman Roy MacGregor’s quest for perfection saw manager Jim McIntyre sacked 18 months later and a struggling team then nosedived under his replacement Owen Coyle and were eventually relegated.
Although unable to reverse the slide, Stuart Kettlewell and Stevie Ferguson saw their comanager roles made permanent even before demotion was confirmed, the start of a process to regain the club’s identity and recapture what made it an upwardly-mobile force for a decade and more.
Coyle signings David Ngog and Innih Effiong were quietly offloaded while familiar faces like Iain Vigurs and Brian Graham returned to the Global Energy Stadium.
Veteran midfielder Don Cowie became the latest to return to his Highland roots when he moved from Hearts in midweek but Kettlewell insists he and Ferguson will not tolerate the players moving into a comfort zone.
‘We wanted people who know the area and are comfortable living here and who are going to adapt to how we are going to play the game,’ he said. ‘We feel we’ve recruited a group of players who will identify with our management style.
‘But it’s not an old pal’s act, they’re not here simply because it would be easy to deal with them. If it became that it would become a social club and it’s not, it’s a football club. We are going to demand as much, if not more, of the guys we know personally.’
As part of the change, Fraser (right) was appointed captain at the age of just 24 and a promising start to the season has seen the Highlanders pick up maximum points from the first two league fixtures to sit top of the Championship.
‘We’ve made a decent start to the season and are feeling positive again,’ says Fraser, who scored a late match-winning goal against Alloa on day one. ‘When we won the cup it was great. Jim McIntyre and Billy Dodds did brilliantly to take us there and we were confident we would kick on.
‘I don’t want to get too bogged down in what happened last season but there were a few changes and we lost our way.
‘We’ve regrouped and the two managers are big on identity, and if we can get that back I think we will be in a good place.
‘We will know where we stand and what Ross County is.’
Although among the newer recruits to Scottish league football, both County and their Highland neighbours Inverness Caley Thistle have quickly established a cup tradition.
‘We’ve made some history for the club but we want to get back to Hampden again,’ says Fraser. ‘The league is the priority but we want another cup run.’
Lennon, who succeeded Alan Stubbs shortly after the Edinburgh club secured their own piece of history two years ago, will know well to regard County with some apprehension.
Just a few weeks into his own managerial career with Celtic he found himself stung as Derek Adams brought the Dingwall outfit to Glasgow for a historic 2-0 semi-final win that took them to the 2010 Scottish Cup Final.
And, on the back of a Europa League qualifier in Molde on Thursday night, there may well be some tired legs in his squad.
‘He was brilliant with me, gave me my debut at 17 and I started my first SPFL game under him at Inverness,’ added Fraser. ‘I will always be grateful for the fact he gave me a platform to go and play. ‘It’s exciting to be going to Easter Road. Hibs have made a good start to the season and their fans are turning up in numbers. ‘We want to play some good football and hopefully win the game.
‘We have done well to scrap in the first two league matches and the results have arrived on top of that.
‘Hibs like to pass the ball about a bit more, so we will set up with a shape to try and deal with that. ‘We need to take any advantage we can. If Hibs are tired after playing in Europe, we need to capitalise on that.’