Appearances & Goals To Date

Andy Reid (GK)		10 apps	-
Craig McKeown		61 apps	12 goals
Johnny Crawford		11 apps	-
Stuart Smith		79 apps	5 goals
Stuart Anderson		64 apps	12 goals
Neil McVitie		62 apps	14 goals
Graeme Rodger		11 apps	4 goals
Paul Lawson		10 apps	4 goals
Scott Barbour		11 apps	4 goals
Neil Gauld		8 apps	2 goals
Garry Wood		11 apps	6 goals
Calum Dingwall (sub)		44 apps	4 goals
Cammy Keith (sub)		77 apps	58 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

A combination of confidence and cussedness can take you a long way in football, but the fact that this one went right down to the wire with a very late single goal being the margin of difference between a team at the top of the league and one at the top of the lower end of it, had an awful lot more than just cussedness and confidence going on. For a start this was the first encounter between these two since Formartine had relieved the Broch of their manager, fitness coach, goalkeeping coach and Scott Barbour – that in itself was going to up the ante in the cussedness department. In addition the Broch entered this on the back of a midweek cup win over the hitherto unbeaten Cove while Formartine had taken all three points up at Brora the Saturday before to break Broch’s record of having been the last team in near on two years to have done so. That raised the confidence stakes for both. The subtexts to this game ensured a right rip snorter.

In the event the spectacle was one of two giants almost punching each other to a standstill in a game that had the appearance of a cup tie more than a league match. It started at a frenzied pace and finished much the same although there was a distinct pattern of Formartine getting on top in terms of territory, possession and pressure and squeezing and squeezing a very resolute visiting team until right at the death there was just enough of a crack to ensure a home victory. For long enough though, it looked like the visitors would hold out sufficient to pinch a point.

Within a minute of kick off, Broch pushed into Formartine territory and after McKeown had tidied up neatly at the back to end the opening salvo, he was blatantly body checked by Davidson who was booked for his efforts. Although the game was never really a dirty one it certainly wasn’t for the faint hearted as neither side was prepared to yield a centimetre to the other and there were some pretty tough dudes out there. The first goal threat came from United after McVitie had pushed on down the flank before picking out Wood. The big striker shielded the ball from the cloven hooves of McBride before releasing it into the path of the mercurial Gauld. The wee striker let fly with a fiercely struck low drive that flew just past Leask’s left upright.

At this stage the visitors were giving almost as good as they got – their work rate was superb- but Formartine were looking just a shade sharper in the final third. Barbour, the ex Brocher was tormenting former colleagues with his pace and trickery out wide and fifteen minutes in whipped in a dipping cross that forced Hay to head the ball hastily over his own cross bar for an unrewarded corner. As the half progressed Formartine pressed enough to keep the visitors in their own territory for periods of time during which they were able to push McKeown and Crawford to near the halfway line and conduct proceedings from there. Broch however were nippy on the break and Chalmers, West and Davidson all knew where and how to find each other. Slick though their breaks were the home rearguard was well organised. The central pairing of McKeown and Crawford is looking less and less like a work in progress and much more like the finished article while the full back pairing of McVitie and Smith not only complements the centre pair well but seem to time their alternating runs down the flanks with immaculate understanding.

For all the endeavour of each side, penetration into opposition penalty box was severely restricted. Around the 25th minute a burst of Formartine pressure spearheaded by Wood yielded three corner kicks in a couple of minutes and a free kick from just beyond the left corner of the area, taken inevitably by Lawson dipped fractionally too late to do damage. As the interval approached, Formartine looked increasingly to be calling the shots but with the visitors looking comfortable enough with eight or more behind the ball and still slippery on the breakaway it was clear that it could still easily go either way. A slick move involving Rodger, Wood and Anderson wove a couple of triangular patterns around and through the Broch defence before the former drew a classy diving save from Leask with a well- judged header from about ten yards out. At the other end Reid pulled a Noble cross cum shot down from under his cross-bar. Half time came with the pattern of the game well set: Formartine had the bulk of possession but Fraserburgh challenged for every ball all over the park and not being at all coy about putting eight or nine bodies behind the ball were proving very difficult indeed to break down.

The second half was little different except for the fact that Formartine pressure was possibly even more intense and prolonged. There was no doubt that they were bossing things but with Leask in stonking good form in the visiting goal and McBride, Cowie and Christy turning thuggish when needed Formartine had little option but to keep hammering away until something gave. The problem was that with such attention to attack the risk of a breakaway goal from Broch was always on the cards. The nearest to success in this way came on the hour mark when a break down the left initiated by an interchange between Chalmers and West set up Noble to whip the ball low and hard to the back post taking out Formartine defenders in the process. Davidson was there for it but was unable to make the ball complete the single revolution it needed to cross the line. The delay was just enough for home defenders to scramble the ball to safety.

Little more than a minute later, Leask again saved the Buchan bacon after a corner by Lawson from the right had entered a second phase and the ball reached McKeown lingering craftily at the front left corner of the box. Taking very careful aim before drilling it through a penalty area as congested as the Haudagain at 8-15 of a Monday morning, his shot looked net-bound all the way until a feline leap from Leask allowed him to get a paw to the ball and touch it away for another corner. One sided although proceedings were by now, the absence of a goal and the sheer cussedness of the Brochers still spelled danger for Formartine.

One goal looked like being enough but the problem of how to get it remained until after manager Hunter decided to play his trump card by introducing Cammy Keith for Neil Gauld in the 65th minute. Initially it looked like Cammy van Persie was going to charge around the park to little avail. To begin with he looked to be more than adequately contained by Broch defenders and posed little goal threat. That is, however, precisely when he is at his most dangerous. A prolonged siege of the visitors’ goal area in the 88th minute looked like being a last forlorn shake of the dice until Mr KEITH did what he does best and changing his run back from far post to near got just enough onto the ball to squeeze it into the net an inch or two inside the upright.
This was all that was needed to win the game and take another absolutely crucial three points at the quarter point of the season. Formartine took the ball to the flanks and by and large managed to hold it there. When Fraserburgh did gain possession United were onto them in a flash to close down harry and harass them until they got the ball back. There was little doubt that they could hold onto the lead until the final whistle and they did just that.

This was an excellent performance of the grinding out a result against a very resolute and confident team variety. United are looking good just now.

Match report by Colin Keenan



Photography by Ian Rennie

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