Appearances & Goals To Date

Andy Shearer (GK)		63 apps	-
Stephen Jeffrey		47 apps	1 goal
Calum Dingwall		39 apps	4 goals
Craig Duguid		28 apps	1 goal
Stuart Smith		66 apps	2 goals
Stuart Anderson		51 apps	8 goals
Callum Bagshaw		54 apps	8 goals
Neil McVitie		54 apps	11 goals
Gary Clark		45 apps	1 goal
Cammy Keith		66 apps	48 goals
Paul Napier		53 apps	4 goals
Kieran Lawrence (sub)		2 apps	-
Marek Madle (sub)		32 apps	16 goals
Stuart McKay (sub)		61 apps	19 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

This is a game that showed clearly the Burke and Hare characteristics of the present Formartine side and leaves newly appointed manager, Kris Hunter still seeking his first victory from his new charges. He will reflect on a match where Formartine, not for the first time this season, failed to show the professionalism to close out a game from what should have been a winning position and ended up with egg on their faces and no points to add to their tally. With 22 minutes to go they were 2-1 ahead and playing ten men. It was a derby where the unexpected can and does happen and luck played a part too but to lose from that position at home against a team they had defeated away from home a couple of weeks earlier looks like a clear predictor of significant close season activity in the transfer market.

For all that they failed to close out the game, Formartine played well enough for around an hour and did so with a back four that had a distinctly make-shift look to it. It was not that Dingwall, Duguid, Jeffrey and Smith are not capable enough at the back but the fact remains that in the absence through suspension of captain and commanding centre half Hay they lacked a natural centre half, organiser and leader and had never played in that combination before. Their rearguard was not quite robust enough to cope with a very determined and quite pacy Neil Gauld supported by the crafty veteran Bavidge.

The game started at break neck pace with more huff and puff than guile and precision but it looked like Formartine were playing the more fluent football from an early stage. Before a minute had gone McVitie had forced his way through the centre splitting Souter and Broadhurst to let fly with a decent drive that flew past Reid’s right upright. Locos responded with an equally pacy break down the left where Bavidge managed to chip the ball across for Gauld only for Smith to read the situation early enough to intercept.

Formartine gradually squeezed Locos to a point where periods of home possession and pressure were sustained marginally longer than those of their visitors. They were putting decent moves together with Bagshaw and Anderson in particular orchestrating play around the Locos area. Locos pressure at this stage was mostly down their left but by and large Formartine kept the ball out of their box. A bizarre indirect free kick inside the box was awarded by the only person in the ground to conceive of a pass back when Duguid in trapping the ball slipped on it and fell. The keeper alert to the danger grabbed the stationary ball and was penalised for his pains. No pass was made, the ball didn’t move forward or back and the keeper had to rush off his line to intervene. Pass back? The resultant free was eventually worked away and Formartine continued in a position of marginal superiority. Play was pretty well end to end and both keepers were exercised both having to tip shots over the top as first United’s Napier drew the save from Reid before a cunning angled chip from Bavidge brought a similar save from Shearer. Bagshaw was at his offensive best and had a couple of well struck drives that went close. On the half hour mark Cammy Keith latched on to an over the top ball to get one on one with Reid only to drive the ball well wide of the left upright.

Formartine got their noses in front in the 32 minute: trickery by Napier down the left flank got him to a position to drill in a vicious shoulder height ball from inside the left corner of the box. Reid could only parry the ball down and off the far post whence it fell for Cammy KEITH who had it in the net in a nano–second. Formartine were fluent enough and looked to be shading it in most areas but Locos were still a potent threat particularly on the break where the supply from McLean fed Gauld and Bavidge to occasionally menacing effect. In the 38th minute it pulled Locos right back into the game just as Formartine seemed to be getting the upper hand. The goal was simply executed and inadequately defended. Bavidge from out near the right corner flag made himself enough space to clip the ball back to an unmarked Gauld who had gone to a central position on the 18 yard line and simply banged the ball from there past Shearer to level. The rest of the first half was a more even affair as Locos morale lifted in the aftermath of the goal.

The second half began with Formartine beginning to call the shots again. Their attacks could go through more than a phase or two and were usually sustained for a little longer than those from the Locos. Their midfield seemed just a touch slicker albeit Locos work rate in that area was beyond reproach. It was the combination of two midfielders that put them back in front in the 55th minute. Bagshaw receiving the ball on the edge of the box from a move out of defence initiated by Dingwall, had his back to the goal, shielded the ball during a sweeping turn that made him the space from which to deliver the ball very precisely to McVITIE to his left about 12 yards out. Biscuits was onto it like a manic wee mongoose, broke free of Forsyth and Begg and rifled the ball into the net.

This looked like putting Formartine in charge but Locos kept plugging away. The game was hard fought in the middle but Clark Anderson and McVitie looked generally to be on top of their jobs and although attacking efforts at either end were not of the frequency or intensity they had been earlier Formartine still looked solid enough. A wee spat between probably the two smallest guys on the park Michie and Duguid - each barely bigger than a bookie’s biro ended with a red card for the former and a yellow for the latter. They did sort of square up to each other in a manner that used to be described as ”handbags” but in these more PC times carriers a greater penalty.

The red card changed the game but not in the way expected. An incensed and inspired locos found it somewhere within them to nullify the home numerical advantage and fought tooth and nail for the equaliser which came after Gauld who having broken free down the right made or was given the space from which to hammer a dipping drive off the junction of the right upright and cross bar. This was not effectively cleared and fell for sub Laing out to the left to drive the ball back into the mixer and back to GAULD again who this time banged it beyond the reach of Shearer from aboiut 15 yards out to equalise. Formartine now had to go about trying to win the game and subs Mackay and Madle ran directly and repeatedly at the Loos rearguard. They made the runs, they had the possession but they did not gain much penetration and the game looked to be heading for a draw when in the 88th minute, Locos sub LEYDEN who had already caused one or two ripples of panic in the Formartine rearguard with his spectacular pace produced a solo goal that was as impressive on his part as it was embarrassing for each of the four Formartine players who tried and failed to halt his progress (and a couple of others who should have but didn’t) over a run that took him about forty yards down the right before cutting in a further fifteen and skelping the ball hard past Shearer from about twenty yards out.

There were a couple of desperate attempts at remedy in the 4 minutes of stoppage time that ensued, -- one of them produced an excellent last ditch tackle by Broadhurst on Mackay but Locos had done a smash and grab on Formartine at North Lodge. That Formartine let this happen is no longer surprising but that’s what Kris Hunter is here to fix.

Match report by Colon Keenan

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