Rose striker wants colleague to stick to the positives

Grady and Renton were both on target as Rose earned a 2-2 draw with the Division Two outfit in last Saturday’s  third-round clash at Glebe Park.

Rose were on the verge of pulling off a cup upset when they led 2-0 before being pegged back, an unfortunate own goal from David Dunn earning  Brechin a second bite at the cherry tomorrow (1.30pm  kick-off).

Grady, however, believes Max Christie’s men are still in with a shout and he is hoping City will find both him and Renton a handful once again this  weekend.

In two spells at New Dundas Park, Grady is playing his tenth season for Bonnyrigg and will mark the occasion at a joint-sportsman’s dinner with team-mate David Burrell in March.

By contrast, former Norwich City starlet Renton is wearing the red and white hoops for the first time this season after  moving from Musselburgh in the summer.

“What people tend to forget about Kris is that he’s still a young lad at 22,” said Grady. “He made his first-team debut for Norwich when he was 15 and has all the attributes of a good player.

“Having had a loan spell at Brechin when he was still at Norwich, I think he enjoyed scoring up there last Saturday and hopefully he can cause them problems again with his physical presence.

“One thing about Kris is that he can give himself a bit of a hard time when something doesn’t come off and he probably needs to work on that so that he can get the best out of himself in games.”

It’s a ‘Little & Large’ partnership, something that Grady had become used to during his time with the Midlothian club.

“Yes, it does seem as though managers like to use me as the small striker,” he laughed. “Before Kris, I found myself playing alongside the likes of Ryan McCallum and Paul Shields.

“But it seems to work and it was good that both Kris and I managed to get on the scoresheet up at Brechin last weekend.

“We played pretty well there and if we’d managed to hold on to a 2-0 lead for five or ten minutes more I think they would have found it difficult to get back into the game.

“It was two mistakes that got them their goals so I don’t see any reason why we still can’t win the tie.

“We normally play a 4-4-2 formation but went with a  3-5-2 last weekend that was sometimes 5-3-2 and we managed to hit them on the counter-attack. It will be interesting to see if they come here on Saturday and go for it in what I think has got to be the biggest game in Bonnyrigg’s history.

“With St Mirren awaiting the winners in the next round, the carrot being dangled is a big one and I think there will be a four-figure crowd there on Saturday to see if we can pull it off.”

Grady has been a good  servant to Rose – and he says it has been a two-way thing.

“The club has been excellent to me over the years,” said the flame-haired forward. “They treat you as though you are one of their own and I’d have to say that over the last couple of seasons we’ve hard the hardest-working committee I’ve ever seen. They’ve tidied the whole place up, revamped the  facilities and, all in all, it’s a better place that it was when I first came to the club.”