Dundee Finish Romanian Tour With A Win

Last updated : 23 July 2002 By Dave Webster
Dundee played the final game of their 3 match tour of Romania and finished off with a 1-0 win against Electro Magnetico, a feeder team for Rapid Bucharest who we drew with on Sunday. Dundee's only defeat was from Sportul Stedensec in the first game last Thursday by 3-0.

All in all, I feel Jim Duffy will be pleased with the performances though a hectic schedule of 3 games in 5 days has taken its toll on some of the players with niggly injuries flaring up and little time to recover from them.

Nacho on Target Again
Not surprisingly, Nacho Novo scored both our goals in a tour in which we scored twice and conceded 4 goals.   This will have done his self belief no harm in his first games after stepping up from the lower league.  It's always been my belief that if you can score goals you can score them at any level.

I never saw these games as important as far as results were concerned. Our players were only into their second full week of training when the tour began. As far as I know the team arrive back in Dundee on Thursday, giving them only two days to get ready for the Preston match this Saturday at Dens, kick off 3.00 p.m. Then, 3 days later, Rapid Bucharest return the favour, playing us at Dens on Tuesday, 30th July, kick off 7.30 p.m.

Apart from the injured Carranza I believe Duffy played all of his squad at some point on the tour, with promising youngsters like Robb (man of the match tonight), Beith, Mackay, Forbes and Mair. Think of it. A year ago these kids weren't allowed near the first team except on odd occasions. Suddenly they're playing alongside them in a foreign country. This will add a new belief to the squad, the youngsters especially, and I believe this will augur well for the season to come.

Because 4 days after the Rapid friendly it's down to league business with Hearts the visitors at Dens. Our first home game last season saw us beat Hibs 2-1 and we hadn't beaten Hibs the season before. We haven't beaten Hearts for two seasons, so let's hope history repeats itself on August 3rd.