Cove Rangers1–0Formartine United

This was more like a reprise of last season's Evening Express Aberdeenshire Cup than anything else. The pattern of play was very similar throughout but sadly for Formartine the result deprives them of one of the trophies that sit in pride of place in the North Lodge Boardroom. United elected to play this game by sitting in quite deep and playing on the counter (just as they had in the aforementioned final) and for long enough it looked like it could very well pay off again. They played well enough to see off any team at SHFL level apart from Cove and it was a desperately close run thing at that with Cove only breaking the deadlock deep in the second period of extra time. United made and missed a few chances but made few mistakes beyond that. For the second game in a row their luck was out. The game was played at Cove’s new home, the custom built Balmoral Stadium – this state of the art astroturf equipped stadium is some contrast to their former set up at Allan Park where their pitch was barely longer than this one is wide.

United started this game minus two key parts of their central “spine” centre back McKeown joined longer term injured centre midfielder Wayne Mackintosh to leave Formartine perhaps just a little short of their ideal starting eleven for a game against Cove who appeared to be at full strength. A consequence of the injury situation was the enforced deployment of striker Gary Wood at centre half. He is an experienced and capable central defender but his 6'3'' presence and finishing abilities were a miss up front against the physical stature of the Cove defenders.

Cove were the first to show and a break down the right ended with a Park cross for Megginson landing on the roof of the net. At the other end a fairly perfunctory drive by MacPhee was held by McKenzie. Within five or ten minutes the pattern of the game was clear. United were prepared to sit in and soak up pressure and rely on the pace of Stott and Greig to set up attacks on the break Yule, Milne and Watson are all hard as nails but none is blessed with outstanding pace so the plan had merit.

Cove had clear territorial advantage and were able to advance their defence, perhaps a little cautiously, to near half way to squeeze United but for all that there was not much penetration into the United box. A shot from a yard or two in it by Milne flew through a thicket of legs but went a foot or so wide of Main's left upright and a couple of crosses from Park and Masson (both former United players) got into the box without reaching their intended targets of McManus and Megginson and the United defence with Wood and young Jevan Anderson at its heart looked increasingly steady.

Clear cut chances were few and far between, Megginson got on the end of a feed from Scully and from fifteen yards hammered the ball low and hard past the right upright. At the other end, both MacPhee and Greig made McKenzie earn his corn with capable saves but with sides as evenly balanced as these two the first period ran out not only goalless but giving the impression that goals were going to be in very short supply.

The second half began with a slightly more adventurous Formartine taking the game rather more directly to Cove than they had and settling up a fairly sustained period of offence for the opening few minutes. In this time Greig and MacPhee had shots on target, the latter with a thumping 18 yard drive drawing an excellent diving save from McKenzie to turn the ball round the post for an unrewarded corner. In response a break by Cove ended with a shot by McManus from the centre edge of the box that barely exercised Main who held the ball comfortably. As a result of the closeness of the game the temperature began to rise and the referee struggled at times to keep a grip on proceedings. Free kicks were beginning to feature increasingly and a tussle between Wood and Megginson ended with the latter going down and doing his best to land inside the box - a ploy at which he is adept. The ref awarded a free kick in his favour a yard outside the box but Masson hoofed it high, wide and anything but handsome over the top.

It was difficult to see where a goal was going to come from and defences were on top.
A few half chances either way and the game entered extra time.

United had moved into a more attacking approach although each side was very wary of the other throughout. The first session of extra time yielded very little to either side and play was contained almost exclusively in the box to box area United now matched Cove territorially and had them looking a little rocky when Greig and MacPhee combined to set up Rodger for a thumping drive that forced McKenzie into a full length dive to tip the ball away for a corner. This in turn caused a brief moment of mayhem in the home goalmouth before Watson booted the ball into touch at the opposite side and the attack dissipated thereafter.

It looked like United might just break the deadlock as they started to push hard for a goal. Cove in response broke a couple of times down the flanks but the United full backs, Crawford and Smith were resolute and managed to funnel the attackers into safer areas and denied them the space from which to deliver effective crosses.

In the second period of extra time United made two very good chances in virtually the same position at the front left corner of the 6 yard box. The first saw MacPhee boot the ball quite narrowly over the top and a few minutes later Rodger did the same from effectively the same spot. In a game as tight as this these chances were probably as good as United were going to get. Shortly after, in the 115th minute, following a free kick about 35 yards out by Macrae the ball was headed on towards the back post to be headed back towards the other side of goal, beyond the reach of Main by of all people the man, the United fans love to hate Eric WATSON.

With only 5 minutes remaining there was no way back for United. They tried all they could to claw their way back but Cove simply shut up shop for the duration. Bar not taking what few chances arose and none of them was in the “sitter” category or anything like it United played very well indeed. A different roll of the dice would have given them a different result and there can be no complaint about organisation or workrate.