ABERDEEN suffered a pre-season setback when Chris Clark sustained a knee injury in their friendly victory against the Irish non-league side.
The defender missed most of last season with ankle-ligament damage and went down last night with no-one near him much to the concern of the Derek McInnes, the Aberdeen manager. He admitted he feared the worst but was awaiting confirmation of the extent of the injury.
He said: "It doesn't look great to be honest. We will see how it is and it's too early to speculate, but he's clearly done something.
"It was serious enough for him to go down early. It's not ideal because we don't want to be picking up injuries. We've been trying Chris at full-back because it's an opportunity for him and because we're a bit short at full-back and this doesn't help matters. Our thoughts are with Chris at the moment and let's just hope it's better news than we think."
McInnes fielded a young starting line-up, changing 10 out of the team that cruised past UCD on Tuesday. The only player to retain his place was Joe Shaughnessy who, presumbaly, kept his jersey by virtue of the fact he is a Republic of Ireland Under-21 internationalist.
Nicky Weaver made his Aberdeen debut, but the goalkeeper's first act was to pick a deflected shot from Shane Dunn into the net after just three minutes.
It took the Pittodrie side until 10 minutes before the break to restore parity. They achieved folllowing a fine drive by Jamie Masson from the edge of the box.
Scott Vernon soon headed in Peter Pawlett's cross to give Aberdeen a half-time lead in the Irish coastal town. Vernon then netted his second of the evening from the penalty spot after he was fouled in the box and Nicky Low rounded off the scoring.
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