Appearances & Goals To Date

Andy Shearer (GK)		64 apps	-
Stephen Jeffrey		48 apps	1 goal
Calum Dingwall		40 apps	4 goals
Craig Duguid		29 apps	1 goal
Graham Hay		38 apps	8 goals
Stuart Smith		67 apps	2 goals
Stuart Anderson		52 apps	8 goals
Callum Bagshaw		55 apps	8 goals
Neil McVitie		55 apps	12 goals
Cammy Keith		67 apps	49 goals
Marek Madle		33 apps	16 goals
Gary Clark (sub)		46 apps	1 goal
Paul Napier (sub)		54 apps	4 goals
Stuart McKay (sub)		62 apps	19 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

A game doesn’t have to be memorable to be historically significant and this was one of them. Historically it gave new manager Kris Hunter his first win and a home one at that but as a spectacle, the season’s penultimate offering was rather less than memorable. On the face of it, this carried quite some potential for a home banana skin slip up as Fort, chasing their highest league position in decades had already claimed some interesting scalps from clubs foolish enough to underestimate them and Formartine have spent the season struggling against teams they were expected to overcome quite comfortably.

In the event, any potential for a serious challenge to United’s authority was blown away two minutes into the second half when visiting midfielder Darren Quigg was red carded (a tad harshly many thought) for a handball conducted more or less on the goal line. At that point, the scores were even at one apiece, but the effects of the reassignment of team sizes was that Formartine were in complete control thereafter and visiting attempts at attack became as frequent and fertile as the droppings of a rocking horse and the game in terms of serious competition was effectively over.

A gusting squally wind – never enough to put the match in doubt nevertheless was strong enough and inconsistent enough to make it a bit of a lottery. Fort elected to change ends to start with the advantage of the wind at their back as they attacked the village end. An initial pattern of Formartine patiently passing the ball up the park and into the wind only to find their efforts quickly neutralised by a mighty wind assisted hoof in the other direction, was quickly established. However, Formartine with captain Hay restored to the heart of defence looked to have the resources in that department to cope with whatever the Lochaber loons could throw at them. In a sense they did because the real credit for their opening goal lay with the freakish effects of the gusty wind. After a few exchanges of Formartine attack being offset by wind assistant clearances, Fort began to string a few passes together and managed in the 9th minute to force a corner on the right. Ken MacKENZIE hoisted his kick out towards the penalty spot to allow for the wind. The ball curled menacingly towards the back post and was blown beyond the reach of Shearer as he tried to pull it down from under the bar, and into the far corner of the net - a goal direct from a corner kick.

This did the visitors’ confidence no harm and with significant assistance from the wind, they made a reasonable fist of things in the middle. Formartine were clearly the slicker and more inventive outfit and were doing enough to offset the effects of the wind: they pushed hard with pace and width and Dingwall on the left had several successes and getting the ball into the box. Bagshaw was hard and direct in his running and there was reasonable supply to the front pair of Madle and Keith. Keeper Harvey was occupied in hauling down crosses from Dingwall, Anderson and McVite. At the other end a quick wind assisted break by MacLeod and MacKenzie concluded with a hard low left to right drive by the latter being touched round his left upright by Shearer.

However Formartine had the better of possession and were pressing for the equaliser which they achieved in the 19th minute. Breaks down the right engineered by Duguid and McVitie were stretching the visiting rearguard and when the two overlapped their way to the corner flag the latter drilled the ball low and hard across the goal face. Cammy Keith was forcing his way forward to the ball but MacPHERSON desperate to intercept succeeded only in deflecting the ball into his own net.

An own goal offset by one direct from a corner, this wild and windblown game was refusing to conform to convention. The rest of the first half was controlled rather than dominated by Formartine who wisely conceded only three more corners before the interval. Although each of these caused some brief goal mouth mayhem as the ball moved unpredictably in the wind, organisation and weight of numbers were enough to contain the fairly limited threat offered by Fort. Formartine had a few flashes up front but neither Madle nor Keith looked at their lethal best while the relatively small but acrobatic and spring heeled keeper Harvey was first to every cross that threatened his goal. With wind advantage after the interval, Formartine went straight on the offensive. They moved the ball about hard and fast around the visitors box and a clipped ball from Anderson was driven by Bagshaw before being turned round the corner by Harvey for a corner on the right. Now it was Formartines turn to see what they could do with the assistance of the wind. Their first wind assisted corner of the game more or less won it for them. Stuart Smith struck one much like that which had eluded Shearer early in the first half. It foxed the hitherto reliable Harvey and was drifting into the net when the paw of Quigg interrupted its net bound progress. The player protested his innocence but ref Duncan decreed otherwise and immediately implemented the double jeopardy of red card and penalty kick.

Cammy Keith thumped the ball left as the keeper dived right and the game from that point on was effectively over. Formartine had the wind, numerical advantage and the lead. All they had to do was to hold onto this for 43 minutes. Nothwithstanding their propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (e.g. losing from 2-1 up against 10 man Locos in mid-week) the strength and unpredictability of the wind was enough to put the game beyond Fort’s reach. They battened down the hatches and went into damage limitation mode withdrawing far enough into their own territory to largely offset Formartine’s numerical advantage in a grossly overcrowded final third.

From this point on the real goal for Formartine was to significantly extend the margin of victory: to fail to score again against reduced opposition would be just a tad embarrassing but it looked that way for long enough. Corner after wind- blown corner was won but so frequent were these that Fort had enough practice to learn eventually how to deal with them. One from the left, struck by Anderson looked to do the business but it was somehow scrambled away off the goal line near the back post. There were periods of ten minutes or more when the ball never crossed the halfway line. Substitutions were made MacKay and Napier replacing Madle and Bagshaw. MacKay showed some of his customary guile up front but succumbed to a rather nasty looking injury before being replaced by Gary Clark.

Playing with the wind can be a bit of a mixed blessing and overall despite making life physically easier and assisting overall pressure it didn’t really aid Formartine’s task of getting the ball into the pokey as their sometimes rather elaborate approach play saw chips and flicks blown away from their intended destinations. It fell eventually to McVITIE to put the score line into the realms of respectability. Just after a Keith drive had fizzed past Harvey’s left upright and another corner had caused goalmouth mayhem, “Biscuits” popped up through the inside right route and to a position just wide of the right post to pop the ball home from about 12 yards range. It had taken until the 88th minute to get there but Formartine emerged with a decent enough score after a decent enough performance in trying conditions.

Match report by Colin Keenan

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