Formartine United8–0Huntly

Having missed two successive Saturday games to cup action elsewhere (cup replays take priority over scheduled league games) a little rustiness might have been expected from Formartine, but if there was any Ferric Oxide on display it was quickly dissipated. Huntly started brightly enough and were the first to force goalmouth action after a speedy break by Napier gave veteran striker Wyness a chance to warm the hands of Reid with a quickly taken ping from the edge of the box. United broke straight back up the park and sustained a couple of minutes of intense pressure around the Huntly area before Lawson’s crisply taken shot from about 20 yards out fizzed inches past Pennycook’s left upright. For the next ten or fifteen minutes the game generated more heat than light as each side hammered away at the other with at times more might than method, but all the time Formartine made and retained a bit better shape and began, a wee bit at a time to impose their format and tempo on the game.

They opened their scoring after a period of well measured, sustained pressure around the Huntly box. Rogers drove the ball into a thicket of limbs and it rebounded more than was cleared back to him. He took this at head height and nodded the ball left and forward to meet the run of WOOD, who seized upon the opportunity and rattled It low and hard from 15 yards out, into the far corner of the net.

This 16th minute opener gave little indication of the rout that was to follow it. Huntly pressed no panic buttons and maintained a high tempo pressing game. It generated enough pressure to yield them a couple of sniffs at goal - one when a cross from the right by Duncanson was played to meet the late run of wily Wyness. Either the cross was a millisecond too early or the run the same amount too late but the striker just failed to make enough of a connection with the ball to beat Reid and it slipped past his right upright. A Napier pop from twenty odd yards was taken by Reid but Formartine were beginning to impose themselves more and more as time went on. Huntly battled hard in midfield but however much they tried to influence proceedings they slipped inexorably from battling back for an equaliser to holding on to resist further damage.

A spell of irresistible pressure from United when they rattled in three more goals over the last ten minutes of the first half transformed what had looked increasingly like defeat into something more akin to a massacre. In the 38th minute ANDERSON delivered a clinically delivered close range header after Masson and Wood had combined to bludgeon the Huntly defence into submission. Two minutes later a United free kick came after Rodger had been clogged when breaking towards the right corner of the Huntly box. He pumped the ball straight into the goal mouth and in the ensuing melee CRAWFORD, with uncharacteristic delicacy, chipped the bouncing ball over Croll and Pennycook neatly enough for it to drop under the bar and into the net. On the stroke of half time, BARBOUR who has been mining a rich vein of goal scoring of late, opened his hat trick with a stunning volley from twenty odd yards out on the left. Lawson provided the ammunition with a perfectly weighted ball across the box and the wee forward timed his delivery to perfection to squeeze the ball in off the inside of the near post.

The second half began as the first had ended - a deflated and sometimes rather fearful looking Huntly were effectively at the mercy of a rampant Formartine. The Portia stuff was in short supply and Formartine simply bossed their still hard working but increasingly overwhelmed opponents for another 45 minutes that again yielded four goals without reply. The first of these was achieved a minute after the re-start when Barbour got the ball, back to goal and marked firmly from behind by Croll, who looked to have effectively blocked his route to goal. The forward was too fly for the defender and somehow found the trickery to wriggle himself and the ball clear of the defender to get goal - side and slot it home from a few yards out.

Huntly tried gamely to limit the damage but despite keeping United at bay for the next 16 minutes were unable to stop BARBOUR completing his first hat-trick for the club. Masson had been tormenting defenders around the left corner of the box before rifling in a vicious shot that looked netbound before it took a deflection off a defender’s shin. This left the ball within range of BARBOUR who had it in the net before anyone else could react.

Masson had done more than enough to deserve a goal to his name and in the 68th minute he produced a classy solo effort picking up a feed from Smith (on for Young) and bustling his way past defenders before crashing a cannonball drive from the edge of the box past Pennycook. The rout was completed with a typically elegant Paul LAWSON effort. Jinking his way into the box he wrong footed Allan and Croll and beat the advancing keeper by chipping the ball over and beyond him and into the far corner of the net. That was it: eight goals without reply against a team who are considered to be on the rise has to be cause for some cautious optimism