Ross County’s Jason Naismith is hoping Borna Barisic’s practical tutorial stands him in good stead for the future.
The marauding Croatia left-back played a full part in the Scottish Premiership leaders’ thumping 5-0 win over the Staggies at Ibrox on Saturday as Steven Gerrard’s side stretched their lead over Celtic to 23 points having played three games more.
At 26, right-back Naismith, who rejoined the Highland club recently after a spell at Peterborough, is no rookie but admitted he had his eyes opened by Barisic.
Ahead of the visit of Motherwell on Wednesday night, the former St Mirren defender said: “Obviously playing against international players you are always learning on the job and my direct opponent was Barisic.
“The guy is a Croatia international and you take wee pointers. Even (with) me at 26, some of the stuff he did during the game I have in my mind and hopefully that improves me as a player.
“I know I went away from the game with that attitude. Just wee things. When the ball breaks down, how quickly he gets back into position.
“Not necessarily that he needed to do it, I just think he was getting himself into good habits for when he comes up against better teams who will probably put him under more pressure, being brutally honest.
“It was just an eye-opener for me to see that, him getting into good habits, how good a professional he was, how fit he was.
“It was a good experience. You take things from your full career, from being a young boy at St Mirren, playing against the first team when you realise how far off it you are.
“So if you don’t take these things on board you are never going to improve and every time you play against a top team you need to take pointers from these guys because they are at top teams for a reason.”
County are in 10th place in the table, one point ahead of Motherwell having played two games more and Naismith knows the importance of the game.
He said: “Obviously it is a team around us in the league and they will be desperate as well to get points here. We need to make sure we are at it.
“We are at home and last time here against Aberdeen we got a positive result (4-1) and performance and it has to be a similar approach from us and we have to defend well because they have quality.
“They finished third last year with basically the same squad so we are under no illusions as to how tough a task it is going to be but it is every bit as important to us as them and we need to make sure they know they have been in a game.”
