Formartine and Forres take an equal share of the spoils
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Forres Mechanics 1 - Formartine United 1
Sometimes a draw can feel like a win when at others it can seem more like a defeat.
For Forres fans taking a point off Formartine is probably grounds for celebration while the Formartine faithful who came to this game with a 100 per cent record for 2023 may still take some comfort in maintaining an undefeated record over that period , yet be disappointed at dropping two points.
The result was probably a fair distribution of goals and points in a game where this was decided in a brief period of a couple of minutes either side of the interval.
Conditions were reasonable with little wind, sunshine and a pitch that was lumpy enough to be a bit of a leveller albeit perfectly playable.
The ball spent far more time in the air than on the deck.
United started brightly taking the game straight to rheir hosts and mounting a number of attacks to pin them down at the Elgin end of the ground.
It was clear that they wanted to establish a high back line and squeeze the play into Forres territory.
In the fourth minute Crawford dispossessed Barron and fed the ball on to Gallagher in the inside right channel.
He swung it forward left to Wade who burst into the box before being blocked by the keeper near the left post.
United established a pattern of successive waves of attack but found Forres quick to the ball and determined enough not to allow United any time in possession.
United’s opening period of pressure yielded two or three corners but didn’t sustain enough pressure to threaten a young and inexperienced keeper.
Forres showed from the start that they were prepared to attack United whenever they could and with both defences dominant for longish spells most of the action was confined to the box to box area.
As the half progressed so too did their share of possession to the extent that an opening goal looked as likely from one side as the other.
In the event that turned out to be Forres.
With time running out at the end of the first half they mananaged , for the first time really, to sustain a period of attack through several phases and had United [with the exception of Wade], pinned down in their own penalty area.
The danger from that ended with a goal kick and United went straight back on the attack but a foul on the keeper returned possession to the home side and a counter attack began.
This went through several phases and a shot from Mclennan was pushed away by Macdonald as far as Barron who pursued by Thomas still managed to get the ball out to WOOD who was lurking unmarked twenty odd yards out and a bit beyond the left corner of the United box.
From there he hammered the ball over the packed box into the postage stamp corner of the net.
This was almost on the stroke of half time and United could do no more than work the ball up the pitch before the interval intervened.
The resumption saw United press immediately to make amends with a concerted attack on the home goal area.
A free flowing break down the right quickly earned a corner there following a Fraser attempt to block a Myykyta cross.
This was played to the near post area and was headed upwards from a throng of players, WADE was first to react and got himself between keeper and ball to head it quickly home from a few feet out.
United had the platform and the ability to go on from there to win the game.
It wasn’t from the want of trying that they failed to do so, but the combination of an unexpectedly fired up home side and a few bad breaks denied them.
They had chances to clinch it but a young, spirited and very lively home side did enough to ensure that those were few and far between.
That said, until replaced by Hanratty, Mykyta repeatedly managed to feed in good quality balls from the inside left channel to the home box only to find the half chances thereby created were somehow contained by the home defence or United’s inability to progress them beyond that point.
The nearest to securing all the points for Formartine came in the 85th minute when a close range shot from Gallagher rebounded from the goal line via keeper’s boot without his seemingly being aware of it.
Crawford also found himself with only the keeper to beat from about 12 yards out but the ball bobbled enough for him to miss it altogether.
Formartine will play worse and win but are now having to face the fact that their recent outstanding form has made them an important enough scalp to take for other sides to raise their game against them.
