East Fife 0-0 Raith Rovers: Ian Murray on his team's fitness after Pat Slattery testimonial

Raith Rovers captain Scott Brown and East Fife stalwart Pat Slattery before kick off (Photo: Kenny Mackay)

Raith Rovers boss Ian Murray was pleased with the fitness of his team after they returned to action just four days into their pre-season schedule – drawing 0-0 with East Fife at Bayview in Pat Slattery’s testimonial on Saturday afternoon.

The Stark’s Park side, who missed out on promotion to the Premiership after losing out in the play-off final to Ross County just over a month ago, started with a familiar looking starting eleven for the match, but brought on the likes of ex-Hibs duo Lewis Stevenson and Paul Hanlon for the second half.

East Fife did find the back of the net twice during the 90 minutes, but both goals were chopped off in a match that saw both teams pass up decent opportunities.

Speaking after the match, gaffer Murray admitted to Raith TV that the match ‘came a little soon’ for his liking but that it was a worthwhile exercise.

Match action from East Fife's pre-season friendly against Raith Rovers on Saturday (Photo: Kenny Mackay)

"Footballers want to get out with the ball and play as often and quickly as they can,” he said.

"We’ve managed to play quickly, maybe a little too quickly for the staff, but that is the nature of the beast.

"We are up and running now. We’ll look at minutes the guys are getting and change it round as required.

“It was a tough, competitive match. We struggled with the pitch, it was really dry and warm.

"We came here to get a runout, improve our fitness and come away with no injuries and we did that.

"We got the fitness aspect. With the ball we had good movement and when we lost the ball, I felt that we worked really hard to get it back as quick as we could.”

Stevenson and Hanlon came on for the second half, as did summer signings Shaun Byrne, Lewis Gibson and Kieran Freeman, and Murray was happy to see the team begin to gel so quickly.

The only new signing to start the match was ex-Airdrie defender Callum Fordyce, who started the match named as a trialist.

He added: "We managed to look at two systems and everyone got on the park for a decent amount of time.

"We wanted to see what the new players could bring and make sure that relationships are built as quickly as possible.”

Everyone looked comfortable together. Lewis (Stevenson) and Paul (Hanlon) came on at half-time and adapted well - it isn’t easy coming into a new setup.

"Lewis Gibson was tenacious on his side. We managed to get some younger players on like 17-year-old Kai Montagu too.

“Ideally, we would have liked another striker available with Lewis Vaughan missing out because we would have changed it up top.”

The match was held in honour of East Fife stalwart Slattery, who the club’s current longest-serving player.

And Murray hailed the midfielder’s “fantastic” achievement, having played over 250 matches for Dick Campbell’s side.

“Congratulations to Pat,” he said. “His testimonial marks a fantastic achievement and we were delighted that we could help him out and play the game.

"We brought a fantastic support too and it made for a great occasion.”