Appearances & Goals To Date

Kevin Main (GK)		24 apps	-
Jevan Anderson		51 apps	1 goal
Johnny Crawford		111 apps	6 goals
Stuart Smith		212 apps	19 goals
Stuart Anderson		184 apps	32 goals
Graeme Rodger		156 apps	54 goals
Andrew Greig		36 apps	13 goals
Archie MacPhee		60 apps	43 goals
Aaron Norris		6 apps	-
Kieran Lawrence		33 apps	2 goals
Garry Wood		115 apps	59 goals
Liam Burnett (sub)		55 apps	7 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

This game, and in particular its result, has really put a cat among the Highland League pigeons meaning that of the 5 teams pursuing Cove Rangers there are now only five points separating 2nd from 6th position with two holding a game each in hand over the others. Formartine are one of them. They definitely started this game as second favourites and given curious but in terms of points lost, expensive lapses earlier in the season, they could ill afford to concede any more ground to their rivals. It was a real “must win”. They won by grinding it out against a team at full strength, in good form and playing with the confidence of a recent run of victories. It wasn't easy, seldom pretty but what is really important in situations like that, United were better at what mattered when it mattered, against a side that played some excellent, patterned football, particularly in midfield and did so for significant periods of time, United in the end defended better and finished better than their rivals. When the chips were down they had what it took to get what they needed.

It didn't start that way and United were dealt an absolute body blow in the fourth minute. Brora's first attack was slick, complex and well orchestrated. They pressed hard on the left quarter where Brindle, Ross, Pickles and MacLean played sharp close range pass and move stuff before MacDonald arrived from deeper and thumped the ball diagonally left to right across the Formartine box towards the rapidly advancing MacLeod. Stuart Smith, alert to the danger, took decisive action and headed the ball to safety over his own side's bar yielding a corner on the right. MacDonald took this delivering the ball in-swinging and dipping to the United goalmouth straight to MACLEAN who swivelled to take it on the half volley and blasted it into the net from feet rather than yards out.

Initially United seemed shell shocked – the goal had come right out of the blue – and perhaps defending and attacking in the face of a strong low winter sun had something to do with it but the effect seemed, for a few minutes at least, quite disabling and Formartine looked almost as if they were standing off their opponents who moved the ball about very confidently indeed while United were doing little more than chasing shadows and made few if any significant tackles. However Anderson and MacPhee got a grip of this within two or three minutes and after each had delivered a firm and well timed tackle to dispossess Pickles and Brindle respectively United got onto the front foot for the first time, they attacked first down the right and with Wood leading the line began to stretch the home defence. Norris has a fair turn of pace and managed to get behind MacDonald and past Williamson before getting the ball over to the left where Greig, Wood and MacPhee showed that they could be every bit as slick as their Brora counterparts and manoeuvred the ball to the left corner of the box to play it a bit right to meet the run of RODGER who needed only a very quick look up before delivering it firmly and very accurately beyond the right hand of keeper Malin to level the game in the 10th minute.

Then you could see exactly why these sides are in the upper reaches of the league. They went hammer and tongs at it in attempt to break the deadlock and although the pace was sometimes scarily fierce, there was a fair measure of skill with it. Brora's strategy was to try to dominate the midfield by weight of numbers while United preferred to build more from the back. The current injury induced shortage of centre backs has forced United to deploy Stuart Anderson as a sweeper in a four man defence. He has a superb football brain and does the job very well but there is less scope for his creativity in opening up defences when he's deployed that deep. Needs must though and MacPhee, in a rich vein of form at the moment, outfoxed Brora's attempts to swamp the midfield and managed to get the ball into the Brora box more often than they would have wished.

The second half of the first half produced an absorbing and very evenly balanced encounter but with exception of Main's dive to push a Brindle snapshot round his left post for an unrewarded corner at one end and Malin going down at the feet of Wood to block at the other neither keeper was really stretched. Brora probably had slightly more of the ball but United were more direct with it when they had it. It was nip and tuck really.

The second half was largely the same although Brora, still maintaining a shade more possession, managed to squeeze United into the final third for longer periods than they had previously. However United's back four looked solid and the home pressure yielded relatively little penetration of their penalty area and shots on goal were infrequent. The best two came from Brindle and sub Mackay: the former with a free kick when his low thirty yard effort slipped past Main's left upright and to be fair to the keeper, it looked as if he had it well covered all the way anyway. The latter came from open play in roughly the same position and produced a remarkably similar result.

It was looking increasingly like if this game was going to be won by either side, it was going to take something well out of the ordinary to bring it about. A very good twenty five yard free kick by MacPhee a bit left of centre dipped to only an inch or two's clearance of the bar on it's way over in the 61st minute and the game had entered a phase where the dominant United defence looked to have blunted the best attacking efforts of the Cattachs and the visitors were beginning to show a fair bit of menace when they moved forward.

In the 68th minute there came that wee bit of magic. Archie MacPhee found a finish that was well out of the ordinary and sealed the game for United. A ball threaded centre to right by Stuart Anderson set Norris off at pace to reach a point about thirty yards short of the goal from which he slipped the ball into the indefatigable Wood who chipped over Williamson to set up MacPhee to collect it from behind the defender and bear in on goal from just inside the area. The box was heavily defended and Archie did well to dribble past a couple of defenders before being forced left of goal to a point about five yards wide of the left post and no more than a few feet in from the bye line. From that almost impossibly tight angle he absolutely leathered the ball into the net no more than a foot inside the far post at about head height. This wasn't a gentle outside of the foot dinked curler, it was a full blooded screamer: as clever a goal from as difficult a position as you'll see in years and executed with consummate style.

It won the game, deservedly so. Brora pressed - they had to but there were few really hairy moments for United as they battened down the hatches, ran down the clock and set off on the long journey home with all the points. It was a significant achievement, Brora have achieved 11 clean sheets this season and are level on points with leaders Cove. Formartine had what it took to take them on in their own back yard, overcome a bizarre early goal and win. They did so in the continuing absence through injury of three key players Mackintosh, Henry and McKeown and showed how youngsters like Jevan Anderson, Kieran Lawrence and newcomer Aaron Norris have matured into players who can go to Dudgeon Park and scrap their way to victory.

Match report by Colin Keenan



Photography by Ian Rennie