Appearances & Goals To Date

Andy Shearer (GK)		38 apps	-
Craig McKeown		35 apps	9 goals
Graham Hay		7 apps	-
Stephen Jeffrey		28 apps	-
Stuart Smith		35 apps	1 goal
Stuart Anderson		19 apps	5 goals
Neil McVitie		30 apps	4 goals
Hamish Munro		32 apps	1 goal
Paul Napier		26 apps	3 goals
Cammy Keith		36 apps	29 goals
Marek Madle		6 apps	1 goal
Callum Bagshaw (sub)		34 apps	3 goals
Gary Clark (sub)		24 apps	1 goal
Sam French (sub)		4 apps	5 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

For a hitherto undefeated home team to lose to a team in the lower half of the league would ordinarily be regarded as a bit of an embarrassment but to apply that perspective to this match would seriously mis-represent the quality of Wick’s performance. They won this game mostly out on the flanks and largely by persistence. Ultimately they worked longer and harder (but not by that much) than Formartine who struggled throughout to contain both Allans, Macadie and the mighty Geruzal. You can’t accuse Formartine of surrendering their unbeaten record without a fight – they certainly threw everything but the kitchen sink at Wick in the latter stages but whatever they had to offer was too little and too late to overturn the product of a great team effort by the North Coasters.

Formartine probably got slightly the better of the opening stages with the spirited Napier running fast and direct at the heart of the visiting defence. In the 4th minute Anderson made his return from injury felt by threading a cunning ball between the centre backs to the nippy wee forward. Napier’s quickly taken shot was on target but a bit of a trundler that was comfortably gathered by McCarthy.

As early as the 7th minute, Wick’s strategy of playing Formartine fast and wide was apparent when Steven scooted off down the right to feed Allan who got the ball past McKeown defending the space where Stuart Smith should have been and whipped it low across the goal face towards the lumbering but lethal Geruzal. Anderson was astute enough to have seen the danger and made a vital interception. The pace and precision of the break could or should have served as some warning to Formartine whose back line continued to look flatter than it should be in such circumstances. That said, it still did its job fairly well and for at least the first half hour Formartine had slightly the better of overall pressure. They were managing one or two shots on or pretty close to target whereas Wick attacks, almost always wide tended to end with balls played into the box and cleared by Formartine defenders.

Keith and Madle were the Formartine spearheads but Farquhar and Grant Steven stuck tightly enough to them to limit their opportunities to a scant few. In the 33rd minute a rampaging run through right midfield by Munro who played it across the front edge of the box to Keith who managed to hold the ball a second or two before releasing it to his strike partner. Madle, was more careful than circumstances allowed and although he got the shot in, he was jockeyed out enough to deliver an off target finish. A few minutes later, a long clearance by Hay caught the central defenders on the hop as it landed within reach of Madle. The forward stumbled ahead of the ball and although he made some sort of recovery, keeper McCarthy gained enough time to hare forward to block and clear as well as any centre half. At this stage Formartine were on the front foot and their back line had advanced up the park to keep the squeeze on the visitors.

Mostly this worked but the problem was that man for man, the Wick wide men had the legs on the Formartine full backs. For most of this period Formartine were calling the shots such as when Napier worked McCarthy quite hard with a twenty yard fizzer but the keeper got both hands to the ball, took the pace off it, then gathered safely. A dangerous looking low cross from McVitie flew right to left across the goal face but his forwards were half a step short of reaching it.

Wick made a number of breaks, mostly sharp, short- passing ones and although there was some success in getting the ball into the danger area, there was little of anything of note to occupy Shearer. He managed to get a floppy kind of push on a cross that he clearly intended to punch but the danger was immediately dispelled by a Hay clearance.
With Formartine looking marginally the more likely to score they succumbed at the psychologically worst moment of an otherwise goal less half when Geruzal put Wick in front a minute before half time. Inevitably it was a move own the flank that produced it. Left back Ross Allan charged down the flank and streaked past Jeffrey who failed to get near him. The ball was driven into the area and seemed to take a rather fortuitous deflection on its way to GERUZAL who from about penalty spot range, slipped the ball past Shearer.

Formartine with the whole of the second half in which to turn things round, seemed to be in little real danger and at the re-start had reasonable expectation that more of the same would probably gain them the points. Wick however started on the front foot and almost extended their lead within two minutes when a MacAdie free kick beat the four man wall to elicit a stunning diving save from Shearer who clawed the ball away from its net-bound course for an unrewarded corner. Formartine optimism persisted for less than five minutes when a near replica of the opening goal left them in a depth of faecal matter from which they were unable to extricate themselves. From the 51st minute when GERUZAL slipped the ball left to right over the diving Shearer, Formartine’s undefeated status was in terminal decline.

It cannot be said that they failed to mount a spirited attempt at restitution but at no point did it inspire serious confidence. The intention was there: they pushed forward (but then they had done that in the first half too) but for whatever reason, the quality simply wasn’t there. Formartine pressure was certainly more intense than it had been in the first half and prior to the second goal. Napier ran at defenders until he almost ran himself out. A 56th minute drive by McVitie found the net but a lateish and rather tight off side call retained the status quo. Copious substitutions: Bagshaw, French and Clark replacing Anderson Munro and McVitie ratcheted up the pressure but pressure was all they produced. It was at times intense and Wick did ride their luck a bit. A bulleted header by French from a Napier corner went ever so close and Napier, in the aftermath of a protracted goal mouth melee let fly with a twenty yard effort that clipped the cross bar on its way over.

There was a sense that it was not going to be Formartine’s day and not for the first time this season they have failed to convert pressure into goals. The evidence is that there are several teams including 10th placed Wick that can do just that. All teams go through spells like that but will time alone fix it? Time alone will tell.

Match report by Colin Keenan



Photography by Ian Rennie

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