Appearances & Goals To Date

Andy Reid (GK)		44 apps	-
Scott Henry		6 apps	-
Calum Dingwall		78 apps	5 goals
Stuart Smith		117 apps	10 goals
Stuart Anderson		94 apps	22 goals
Paul Lawson		39 apps	13 goals
Neil McVitie		76 apps	14 goals
Graeme Rodger		50 apps	15 goals
Scott Barbour		45 apps	17 goals
Neil Gauld		46 apps	29 goals
Conor Gethins		7 apps	5 goals
Shane Jamieson (sub)		1 app (debut)	-
Max Berton (sub)		17 apps	1 goal
Garry Wood (sub)		47 apps	30 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Shane Jamieson

(Signed August 9th, 2016)

Milestones

It was as recently as the final game of last season that Formartine last called at Seafield Park on League business. Then, they won 10-0 but any conception that they might repeat that would belong more to the realm of fantasy than football. 6-1 is still, forgive the gerund, a doing and it didn’t take long for United to demonstrate that there would be no other outcome.

They took the game straight to the Speysiders; first testing them down the left when a Lawson through ball set up Anderson and Barbour for a bit of trickery that ended when the latter’s cross bound for Gauld, was just scrambled away by McShane. A minute later and an overlap by McVitie and Rodger produced a low driven ball into the box that bobbed about with Gauld and Gethins terrorising defenders before McCallum managed eventually to flop on it. This sort of pressure soon showed that although the Thistle squad was studded here and there with good players, a team listing 5 trialists was going to struggle in the face of the firepower Formartine were bringing to the party.

The scoring began as early as the 7th minute after a break through the centre by Barbour on the back of some crafty distribution from deep by Lawson and Anderson. Eluding a challenge from Cairns, he slipped the ball forward and left to meet the run of RODGER. The angle wasn’t the best but the hardy midfielder saw the gap and leathered the ball fiercely past McCallum.

For the next few minutes it looked like United were indeed going to reach double figures as wave upon wave of attack was visited upon their hosts. GAULD was too quick and wily for his markers to contain and made his opening contribution with a couple of goals in as many minutes, a contribution which effectively closed off the game as a contest as early as the 12th minute. Each was a classic of the poacher’s art: the first, in the 11th minute, pinched during a spate of goalmouth confusion after a Barbour cross was a ball played, almost squeezed in, from beyond the left post and not far in from the bye line. It reached the net at the back post. His next, the one that clinched the points, came from the other side of goal after a brief siege to the Thistle goalmouth. Anderson and Rodger had shots blocked by a knee and a pair of shins before the striker nipped in and clipped the ball through a gap perceptible only to himself and into the net.

Maybe there’s something about facing inevitable defeat this early on that removes any pressure of expectation and rather than crumbling entirely: Thistle did what they could to make a decent fist of it and without in anyway threatening to seriously embarrass the visitors, produced some phases of decent enough play. Formartine were still calling the shots and clearly playing within themselves while Thistle worked very hard to close things down in the middle and weren’t wholly unsuccessful in the process.

The net effect was that the previously almost incessant pressure on the Strathspey rearguard was eased a little and United’s tendency to over-hit balls to their forwards offered further respite to the home side. This state of affairs persisted until ten minutes before the interval when United’s shape and timing returned and they were again attacking fluently and coherently. A couple of forays down the right, each initiated by runs from deep by McVitie, yielded unrewarded but still quite threatening corners on the same side. The second of these went through a couple of phases without being fully cleared. This time Barbour who had delivered the initial set piece found the ball returned to him not far from where he had earlier delivered it. He knocked it back in and ANDERSON, near the back post, controlled the ball before coolly slotting it into the net from ten yards out. Thistle stuck doggedly to their task and held on until the interval without sustaining any further damage.

The second half opened like the first with United on the front foot and was barely two minutes old when Gethins with an outrageously impertinent back heel, set up Rodger about ten yards out from the centre of an open goal. The midfielder was taken by surprise by the move and skewed his shot wide. Thistle however had their pride and their overall contribution to the game deserved a goal and it was a good enough one when it came. Just after Rodger all but atoned for his earlier miss with a rasping drive that McCallum did very well indeed to turn away at the base of his left upright, HERSEE struck for Thistle after a swift break through the middle worked by MacLeod. He set up the forward at the edge of the box and as Reid moved to close him down, he rifled the ball accurately past his right hand.

This was enough to show that no Formartine complacency would go unpunished and they were professional enough to ensure that the situation would not arise. Gauld had bagged his brace but Gethins was yet to score. The new signing from Nairn is far too competitive to let that situation persist and produced a couple of clinkers. The first of these, in the 59th minute was a gem. Anderson relishing his return from injury was pulling the strings in central midfield about ten yards shy of the box: spinning away from Frenandino-Soto, he wrong footed Edwards and threaded the ball through to GETHINS who still had a lot to do. Dropping a shoulder he feinted enough to make a wee gap through which he drilled the ball into the net from 15 yards. His next was more of a team effort that started from a free kick down the right taken by McVitie, following in behind it he worked an interchange with Anderson before striking the ball diagonally into the box where despite close attention from a pair of defenders the striker proved too quick for them and rifled the ball home to complete the final score line.

It is never easy to impress in games that you are expected to win comfortably. United fulfilled expectation by winning by a country mile. The opposition seemed a tad tougher than last time out and United while sound enough overall could still be said to be a bit patchy. You can’t however grumble about the score. It won’t be every team that bosses Strathspey to that extent.

Match report by Colin Keenan



Photography by Ian Rennie