Appearances & Goals To Date

Errol Watson (GK)		2 apps	-
Craig McKeown		50 apps	10 goals
Graham Hay		21 apps	4 goals
Stephen Jeffrey		32 apps	1 goal
Stuart Smith		49 apps	1 goal
Stuart Anderson		34 apps	7 goals
Neil McVitie		43 apps	8 goals
Hamish Munro		46 apps	1 goal
Paul Napier		38 apps	4 goals
Cammy Keith		51 apps	38 goals
Marek Madle		18 apps	9 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

It was a cold, bleak and blustery evening of the type that the Buchan coast specialises in at this time of year, far from ideal conditions for professional football but the crucial bit about it was that it was the same for both sides. One of them adapted by fulfilling their desire to win the game by hard work and commitment while the other short changed supporters by doing little if anything more than simply going through the motions. The result indicates that Fraserburgh were the former who well deserved their win and Formartine, the latter whose performance can be described only as abject. A number of their individual performances were apathetic, some pathetic, and a couple, arguably, both.

The pitch after days of rain was in surprisingly good condition and the strong squally wind blowing towards the town end helped to keep the surface relatively dry on top. Formartine opened with this wind at their backs and soon put pressure on their hosts’ rearguard. The ball was swung into the goalmouth by Napier and with Madle attacking the area immediately in front of the back post, keeper Cowe did well to pluck the ball from the toes of the big Czech striker in the second minute. Wind at their backs, Formartine pressed everyone high up the pitch to sustain pressure on the Broch a tactic that is fine if your defenders have the legs to match the opposing forwards on the break. It was clear that right back Jeffrey lacked the pace to cope with Barbour who could take a good couple of yards out of him every time he took him on. Curiously the defender persisted in pushing forward. It was quickly apparent that Formartine were struggling to cope with wind “advantage” and a number of balls from defence and midfield simply flew beyond the reach of the front pair of Madle and Keith who , given the conditions saw less of the ball than might be expected.

It took only four minutes for the lively, industrious Broch side to exploit over commitment in the visiting defence as Fowlie cashing in on a slip by Hay (ironically one of the few Formartine players to emerge from the evening with credit) fed the ball to Dickson to whip it diagonally left into space vacated by an over-committed Jeffrey. BARBOUR was off at pace, and as Formartine desperately flooded back, he retained momentum, broke into the box and from left of goal and about 15 yards out drilled the ball low and hard past keeper Watson into the far corner of the net.

Formartine supporters were looking for a response from their side but little was forthcoming. The response was largely more of the same. Anderson threaded a few balls forward but mostly they were over hit and McVitie had a couple of forays into the box from the right flank but he only once succeeded in delivering the ball to a striker in a menacing position. This was in the 28th minute when he set up Keith about five yards out of goal, in a central position when the keeper was at the left post. The striker took his time and side-footed the ball to take his chance, as easy as they come, but somehow pushed the ball beyond the right post and out of play.

Fraserburgh kept their eyes out for the possibility of breakaways and with Formartine failing to connect midfield supply with forward requirements, they were at times gaining the ball cheaply. Mark Cowie provided the ball that started a Dickson/ Noble foray on the half hour mark. An immaculately judged challenge on the latter by Hay bailed out Formartine and save their blushes for another four minutes until a slapdash move by McKeown let Noble pinch the ball. The Formartine Captain made no effort to retrieve the situation as the forward shifted the ball quickly forward left to Barbour and on to JOHNSTON who leathered it past Watson from around 12 yards out for number two.

Formartine were now in deeper trouble than their apparent efforts would indicate yet still there was little change to the pattern or tempo of their play. Fraserburgh tails were up and they chased and harried far more than Formartine were able to comfortably contain. Between losing the second goal and half time [over ten minutes] with a now really quite strong wind behind them they managed not a single shot on target. In fact they didn’t really manage a shot off target either. Things were that bad.

There was an expectation that something about the Formartine side would change over the interval: most thought it would be in personnel, perhaps the withdrawl of Jeffrey for the pacier Duguid or to reduce McKeown, whose commitment seemed lacklustre at best, to the bench. When the same line up re-appeared, there still remained some hope that commitment would change. It didn’t. For the next 15 minutes Fraserburgh, the wind now at their backs laid siege to the Formartine back line. They found as Formartine had in the first half that wind advantage of the scale the elements had provided, was a distinctly mixed blessing and they too were over hitting balls into the box. Formartine were making little headway in the breakaway department, but they were doing enough to keep Fraserburgh at bay and Watson had few, if any saves of note to make. The keeper did however struggle quite severely with goal kicks – any sort of kicking really- into the wind. Virtually every effort he made went out of play left or right and well short of the half way line. Captain McKeown intervened to take on goal kicking duties himself but when his effort met a similar fate, bringing howls of derision from the crowd he, rather sulkily some thought, promptly resigned the role.

However as time went on the home side began to play the ball about a bit more on the deck, but with Formartine defending in some depth, they would have done better to build from deeper and draw out their visitors. Around the hour mark, Formartine had their best spell of the game. At last, they kept the ball down and played shorter passes and, inevitably, gained a bit of penetration. Napier and McVitie began to make some runs in the channels and wider areas and from time to time Hay would burst through the middle. This relieved pressure on the defence more than it mounted any sustained threat to Fraserburgh. One or two frustrated attempts on goal from longish range by Napier and Munro were about as far as this wee spell of enlightenment took Formartine.

It didn’t last for long though and the balance of play was still markedly with the Broch. In the 69th minute, the third and final nail was driven into the Formartine coffin. A free kick from a good 30 yards out was taken by JOHNSTON. The wind was finally turned to advantage as he struck the ball a tremendous blow and saw it explode from his right foot and fly into the net at a pace that left wall and keeper impotently rooted to their respective spots.

This ended the game both as a competition and a spectacle. Formartine had nothing left offer beyond the ability to keep the score at that level. Broch made little further impact on the Formartine goal beyond a Dickson snapshot that Watson beat away at the base of his right hand upright and the game drifted to its desultory conclusion.

Match report by Colin Keenan