Newtonmore welcome Kingussie this Saturday in the cottages.com MacTavish Cup Semi-Final. We sat down with Newtonmore star Iain Robinson ahead of this huge game. An interview with Kingussie’s James Falconer is available here.

Iain, first Badenoch derby of the season on Saturday, how are the nerves ahead of the game?

Nerves aren’t too bad just yet. I think whenever there’s a game as big as this at the weekend you spend the whole week just itching to get on with it and get started. I’m sure come Saturday morning the nerves will really kick in though as it really is a big game for both teams.

Do you do anything different to prep for these kind of fixtures?

I think automatically when there’s a big game people tend to want to do different things to make sure they are as best prepared as they can be. Personally I prefer to try and stick to the normal training regime and just try to treat it like any other game, although this can be pretty hard at times.

8 goals in 7 MOWI Premiership games this season, how are you feeling in your own shinty? You’re the 2^nd top scorer in the Premiership…

Yeah I suppose I have got to be fairly happy with that. In all honesty though there is plenty of room for improvement, I think if there was a stat showing my shot conversion rate it would maybe tell a different story so there is still plenty to work on.

What do you think Kingussie’s strengths are going into Saturday?

They have a lot of strengths, most often people probably say their forward line because they are so fast and ruthless in front of goal. They have also shown over the last few weeks that they have good strength in depth as I know they were missing a few players here and there but have still managed to win tricky games.

You had to watch Kingussie win it all last year, does that give you extra motivation to win ahead of Saturday?

Of course it does. Winning everything automatically makes them the team to beat and every team is going to want to knock them out of a cup or take points of them at some stage of the season. As we have them in the next round of all cup competitions we would have no excuses for not taking our chance to do so come the end of the season.

Finally, you were the man of the match after an incredible display in the 2019 final, how did that feel?

Aye I remember that game well. Glenurquhart played really well on the day and made it difficult for us, but in the end we managed to come away with a 3-0 win which we were delighted about. We have come a long way since that game, our team is very different now. I think it would do us the world of good as a team to get to a big game like this and for some of the newer faces in our squad to experience a major final. Fingers crossed we can get there on Saturday.