Appearances & Goals To Date

Andy Reid (GK)		52 apps	-
Johnny Crawford		51 apps	3 goals
Calum Dingwall		87 apps	6 goals
Jamie Michie		30 apps	-
Shane Jamieson		7 apps	-
Paul Lawson		48 apps	16 goals
Stuart Anderson		104 apps	24 goals
Jamie Masson		34 apps	4 goals
Graeme Rodger		60 apps	19 goals
Scott Barbour		55 apps	26 goals
Garry Wood		57 apps	38 goals
Max Berton (sub)		26 apps	1 goal
Neil Gauld (sub)		49 apps	29 goals

Starting Lineup

Matchday Squad

First Team Debuts

Milestones

While it would be wildly premature to predict the outcome of the league competition as early as mid-October, it did not need a PhD in statistics to see that the losers of this particular match were always going to be in a substantially disadvantaged position thereafter. The direct implication for United is that even if they win every remaining league game (all 20 of them) from now until the season’s end, they would still need others to take points off leaders Buckie to pip them to the title. There’s every chance that Buckie will falter somewhere along the road but of the three teams poised to cash in, Formartine are now the poorest placed to profit.

This bad day at the office started early: twenty minutes before kick off, wing back Stuart Smith injured an ankle during the warm up and was immediately carried back to the changing rooms. Jamie Michie, listed as a sub, took his place in the starting line up in a game which began in a downpour gusting across the pitch on a vile east wind. Although the wind was more in Formartine’s favour, it was Brora who called the shots for the opening phases with quick fire attacks which quickly showed that they could rattle the newly re-constituted Formartine defence. Their approach was to play it fast and wide and with players as swift over the ground as Brindle, Pollock and Sutherland Formartine struggled to get into the match. They managed one foray into Brora territory and it yielded a free kick after Pickles impeded Barbour. It was in a hopeful position about 25 yards out and a touch right of centre but Lawson’s free failed to beat the wall.

With Brora in early dominance, both the cocky wee Sutherland and the marginally more civilised Pollock went close with shots from the edge of the box. After a mini siege on the United goalmouth which began with a corner on the left and ended a couple of minutes later when Ross drove a fifteen yarder a foot or less wide of Reid’s right upright, Formartine broke down the left. Roger and Masson combined well enough but a Williamson interception broke up the attack before he slipped the ball to Lisle who set off down the wing. Dingwall – who had ventured down the flank in support of the initial attack now faced the Brora midfielder out wide and a few yards into the Brora half. It was a tackle he had to win, but he didn’t. He made the effort but ended with his doup in the dubs as Lisle made off with the ball. He slung it diagonally cross field to the unmarked BRINDLE who was off in a flash towards goal. As Reid advanced to close him down, he picked his moment and spot and skelped the ball low hard and very precisely into the far corner of the net for a 7th minute opener from fifteen yards range.

The last thing United needed was for Brora to get an adrenalin rush, but it looked that way as the visitors produced a period of ultra-high intensity attack which, for the next few minutes, United showed little sign of being able to counter. Brora were buzzing and during this phase where United, try though they might, struggled for possession the visitors quickly extended their lead to two goals. In the 12th minute there was another sustained onslaught on the Formartine goal area. Brora worked the ball left to right and back to a more central position from where Ross tried a twenty five yard effort. Crawford did well to get his head to the ball but with no safe options within range, managed only to head it a few yards forward. Sadly for him this was in reach of LISLE who simply controlled the ball before lashing an unstoppable shot past Reid.

A lesser team than Formartine might well have rolled over at this stage and invested faith in miracles, some deity, damage limitation tactics or a combination of all three. To their credit, they fought tooth and claw to get themselves back into the game. It was far from easy and there was no sudden turnaround, but ten minutes or so after conceding the second goal they had weathered the storm just enough to push Brora back nearer to where they belonged and asked a few questions of them. Barbour was doing enough to put Williamson under occasional pressure and although Wood was getting precious little from the statuesque Munro, the battle itself kept the player/ manager /captain from kicking anyone else. Rodger and Anderson produced some, albeit intermittent supply in and to areas around the box and United were beginning to make a game of it.

In the 25th minute, Barbour, closely marked by Williamson, was trying to break into the box and having taken the ball to the defender, was spinning off him with it when the number 4 clipped him with a belated and slightly rearward challenge. He couldn’t have been more than a yard into the box at the time and Brora players argued that the offence had taken place outside it entirely. Ref Shepherd was having none of it and gave the penalty that LAWSON converted with aplomb, driving the ball hard and low into the left corner.

From this point on until half time the game was much more balanced and having been a bit of a Brora siege interspersed with Formartine breakaways, moved into a more conventional midfield battle. A cross cum shot, from beyond the right corner of the box by Michie had Malin scrambling to claw the ball away from the junction of his right upright and the bar and an accurate but not overly powerful header by Anderson required a dive by the keeper. Brora could still break with pace and menace and Brindle in particular was prone to make the odd unexpected blast into wide areas. One in the 37th minute yielded a pass to Pollock that was then despatched at shoulder height just past Reid’s right upright.

Brora tried another high tempo blitz on United at the start of the second half but this time it was managed and to an extent countered in the sense that United got more possession than they had earlier. They had enough of it to contain Brora but they never got to the stage of imposing their own game on the visitors. The equation worked out that United at their best could hold Brora but Brora at their best were able to boss United. Brora’s riposte to Formartine getting back in the game was to make crucial substitutions that introduced Greig and Gillespie for Lisle and Brindle just before the hour mark and Maclean for Sutherland a bit later.

This changed the game: GREIG, with as much pace and trickery as Brindle had fresh legs and was an immediate menace on the flanks. In the 78th minute, he earned his corn with a mazy run down the left where he outpaced defenders before cutting in to ping the ball neatly beyond Reid for the third. The game was now effectively beyond Formartine, but they still gave it a try by replacing centre half Jamieson with centre forward Gauld effectively going 3-4-3. It was worth a try but Brora knew how to cash in and exploited the depleted defence by passing the ball around them to finish with the goal of the game as the ball was moved one touch at a time from centre to right channel and back across the area to the far post where ROSS buried Maclean’s perfectly judged pass, side footed from about 5 yards out.

Match report by Colin Keenan



Photography by Ian Rennie

None.