Appearances & Goals To Date

Ewen MacDonald (GK)		11 apps	-
Shane Jamieson		12 apps	1 goal
Jamie Michie		35 apps	-
Calum Dingwall		91 apps	6 goals
Stuart Smith		127 apps	11 goals
Stuart Anderson		109 apps	25 goals
Graeme Rodger		65 apps	23 goals
Derek Young		11 apps	2 goals
Scott Barbour		60 apps	28 goals
Scott Ferries		10 apps	-
Neil Gauld		54 apps	32 goals
Max Berton (sub)		29 apps	2 goals
Kieran Lawrence (sub)		3 apps	-
Conor Gethins (sub)		14 apps	6 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

Last time out these two met was back in August when the Broch won through to the semi- final stage of the Aberdeenshire Cup on the back of a penalty shoot out after a 3-3 draw. Since then, both had shown inconsistent and sometimes rather disappointing form making the outcome of this one hard to predict. As far as it is possible to identify any league game as a “must win” encounter this early in the season, this was one: defeat for either would be enough to set tongues wagging about being “on a slide” and suchlike negativity. In the event, the scale and ease of United’s victory was surprising: they all but brushed aside the “Brochers” and dominated all aspects of the game at all stages. Without diminishing the opposition, it must be said that United’s road to victory was achieved much like pushing at an open door. OK it was a decent enough shove, but this was a young, sometimes feckless, Broch side with fewer of the battling qualities normally associated with teams operating from that stable and it lacked the creativity, work-rate or application to match a United side. Broch would claim to be injury hit but United, lacking, Lawson, Crawford, McKeown, Masson and Wood were in a pretty similar boat.

The opening few minutes of the game, which began and continued in intermittent squally showers of hail that rattled through on a cold north wind, set a pattern that barely varied throughout. United started by attacking the space in front of and around the visitors’ penalty area and pinning them well back, forcing them to use midfielders for their defensive more than creative qualities. In short, United got them dancing to the Formartine tune and kept them there gie near throughout. In the third minute, some slick inter passing down the left, initially between Dingwall and Ferries created the platform for Barbour to have a go at his former colleagues’ defence. He turned Ryan Cowie and evaded Taylor but then found himself closer to the goal line than he’d wish. However he still got away a cleverly angled wee snap shot that just shaved the far post. A minute later United were back at it when Ferries, picking up the product of a run down the right by Michie, wriggled past two defenders before being crowded out around fifteen yards from goal on the point of unloading a shot.

Broch were reduced to breakaways but these were few and far between and competently negated by a slightly make-shift back four where Stuart Smith, normally a left back partnered Jamieson in the centre with Michie and Dingwall right and left of them. Although, arguably, Broch’s strengths lie in midfield, they were given little opportunity to exercise their talents in that area because of United’s incessant pressure in the final third. That gave ample scope for Formartine midfielders, particularly Ferries and Rodger to show their considerable attacking credentials. In the 28th minute the two inter passed before Ferries suckered Stuart on the left edge of the box and drew Taylor before clipping a superbly accurate chip that dropped just behind the keeper and right on the head of RODGER who had moved to a position a couple of yards off the goal line and a step or two inside the back post. The finish was an accomplished header that left the keeper with no chance of diverting its net-bound flight.

Broch worked away but United’s pattern of wave upon wave of attack persisted. Gauld and Barbour were too fast and tricky to allow any respite to the visiting rearguard but the persistence of the pressure created a very clogged up final third. It wasn’t that Broch were going down the damage limitation road but simply that the persistence of pressure dictated that more and more players ended up in that area. If United were guilty of anything in this, it may have been in a tendency to want to walk the ball all the way through the defence into the net rather than investing something in a few more long range efforts.
The second period began with another siege on the Broch goal down at the village end that yielded a couple of corners. The second of these, taken on the left by Barbour, dropped just beyond the far stick and created a bit of a “stooshie” before being hacked away by Stuart. The wily Anderson, lurking at the edge of the box was the recipient and leathered the ball back goalwards towards the right post area. JAMIESON got a significant of one of his big feet to it and wrong-footed the keeper by deflecting the ball into the net just inside the other post for his first goal for the club.

Now two down just three minutes into the second half, Fraserburgh had to raise their game, and in a way it looked like they had as they advanced their defensive line and tried to conduct affairs more in the midfield area. They had some, limited success in this to the extent that they sort of killed the game for a twenty minute period during which neither keeper was significantly occupied and where the ball seldom reached the penalty area of either side. United at this stage still had more and better possession, a two goal lead and were still playing with better shape but it took them until the 71st minute to go further ahead. What an absolute stonking, ripsnorting, thundercrack, rocket, banger, sparkler, roman candle, explosion of a shot it was too. No need for any Guy Fawkes stuff after this one. Seizing on a slack midfield pass in the Broch ranks fully thirty, perhaps nearer forty yards out, Graeme RODGER caught the ball absolutely perfectly and delivered it with laser like pace and precision straight into the top right corner of the net.

That alone would have been enough to warrant his man of the match award but the midfielder was far from finished. He was after his first hat trick for the club and he got it too - with a simple but well taken opportunistic finish in the 85th minute. By this stage the visitors were cold, wet and weary and since going three up, Formartine were back where they belonged, calling all the shots and doing what they could to assuage memories of their midweek embarrassment to Banks O Dee.

Subs Berton and Gethins had just come on for Barbour and Gauld and the former was tormenting the wearying defenders by darting about around them in dangerous areas. Having just stretched them in this way, the ball was thumped away to the other side of the park where Dingwall collected it, drove forward a few yards and swung in a viciously precise, slightly diagonal cross just short of the back post. Rodger had timed a wee run to take him away from Taylor, reached the ball as it landed and pinged it home from close in to complete a top notch hat trick.

That was as a good attacking performance where United took the game by the scruff of the neck and ground down Broch with a relentless display of high tempo football to win by a well merited four goal margin.

Match report by Colin Keenan



Photography by Ian Rennie