Appearances & Goals To Date

Andy Reid (GK)		45 apps	-
Scott Henry		8 apps	-
Johnny Crawford		43 apps	2 goals
Calum Dingwall		80 apps	5 goals
Stuart Smith		119 apps	10 goals
Stuart Anderson		96 apps	23 goals
Paul Lawson		41 apps	13 goals
Graeme Rodger		52 apps	17 goals
Scott Barbour		47 apps	19 goals
Conor Gethins		9 apps	6 goals
Garry Wood		49 apps	30 goals
Max Berton (sub)		19 apps	1 goal
Derek Young (sub)		4 apps	1 goal

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

There’s little certainty about how Nairn are expected to perform this season: after the departure of their main sponsors, followed by the management team and most of their top paid players (including striker Gethins to Formartine), many predicted a season of struggle in the nether regions of the table. Results have, to a fair extent, contradicted this and they certainly approached this mid-week game with the confidence of a decent victory over Keith the weekend before.
They showed no signs of anxiety about facing Formartine and took the game to them straight from the start. After five minutes or so, they showed their teeth when Maclean played in Naismith with a sight of goal from the edge of the box. The shot was crisply struck but marginally too high. United got into gear in the 14th minute when the silky midfield pairing of Anderson and Lawson combined for the former to feed the latter just inside the left edge of the box. Lawson’s drive fizzed just wide of young keeper Maclean’s right upright. United were beginning to get a bit of shape and with Barbour in fine form began to press in the wider areas.
This began to stretch home resources and over the next fifteen minutes the pressure was raised bit by bit: Barbour and Rodger were beginning to penetrate enough to get the ball through to big Gary Wood who went close in the 21st minute with a thumping drive from a Barbour feed that went over the top and even closer in the 23rd when his snap shot from within the box was charged down by Naismith. A couple of minutes later a Lawson cross from a Barbour corner just failed to reach Henry dangerously placed at the back stick.
The pressure continued and in the 27th minute Barbour was fouled about 25 yards out. Gethins’ free kick was right from the top drawer but unfortunately for the ex Nairn man, keeper Maclean somehow or other got just enough onto the ball to divert its net-bound progress.
Nairn still showed their confidence and asked a few questions of their own: Naismith and Maclean were showing a good level of understanding and combined well enough for each to set up the other with half decent chances around the half hour mark. The former’s finishing effort was just too high and the latter’s was saved competently by Reid who had seen the danger early on and closed down Maclean’s options before blocking the shot. Set up with two banks of four, Nairn were well organised and knew when to sit in and when and how to break.
There really wasn’t too much between the sides; Formartine were shading things in terms of possession and territory but Nairn certainly showed that their ambitions extended to all three points. In the 39th minute Smith, blocking a pile-driver by Naismith took the ball full in the face. Anxiety about serious injury was assuaged when he was able to rejoin the fray after a few minutes of attention. As the half ran out, both sides pushed to break the deadlock. Lawson had a snap shot blocked by Riddell and at the other end, the troublesome Naismith got in a reasonable header but it was saved by Reid.
Formartine’s greater consistency and coherence began to show as the second half progressed and Nairn assumed more of counter attacking position. In the first minute a Lawson free kick after a foul on Rodger stretched but failed to beat Maclean and ten minutes later Barbour got onto the end of a prodigious clearance by Andy Reid and whipped the ball past Maclean and into the net only to find his effort thwarted by the award of a free kick for a rather gratuitous foul by Gethins on MacLeod. Disappointment was transitory and in the next minute United got the opener. Dingwall broke down the right and fed Gethins inside him. BARBOUR was going at full throttle through the middle, collected a perfectly timed and weighted delivery from Gethins and skelped the ball beyond MacLean into the net.
Nairn tried to get back on terms but United were by and large slick enough to prevent them. Naismith was the architect of most of the threat they mustered and when he was contained, so, by and large, were Nairn. United with their noses in front were looking for the goal that would most probably assure their victory, but it took until the 75th minute to do it. Wood had rumbled up the Nairn rearguard a couple of times and in the 70th minute had a drive blocked right on the goal line and five minutes later, much the same happened again when Riddell managed to deny him. RODGER, however was in on the rebound in a flash to turn the ball into the net.
Nairn battled on but despite lots of effort they never really achieved the dominance needed to reverse their fortunes. United didn’t have it easy, sub Young and Lawson were booked for a sandwich move on Kerr in the 80th but as a team did enough to keep a clean sheet and return from a venue where points always were and still are difficult to come by.

Match report by Colin Keenan



Photography by Ian Rennie