Buckie win through over Formartine in the GPH Builders Merchants Highland League Cup
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Formartine United 1 - Buckie Thistle 3
Fortune doesn’t seem to be shining on United these days: their overall play has been good - definitely better than the results suggest but they have still suffered home defeats in two successive cup ties .
It’s often said that you make your own luck and that the harder you work the luckier you get.
There are more than a few Formartine way who will be sick of hearing that.
This was a quarter final tie in the GPH Builders Merchants Highland League Cup and United played at least as well, if not better than Buckie did for 75 of the 90 minutes.
However they had a dizzy spell in the middle of the first half where they shipped three goals each of which was the product of individual error by players who are generally reliable and haven't made any similar mistakesbefore or after.
United started on the front foot working the ball down each flank and soon had the visitors squeezed into the final third at the Oldmeldrum end.
The pace of Norris and Wade was stretching the Buckie rearguard and a free kick by Gallagher after Munro had felled Rodger with a tackle that was both well late and nastily high, had Herbert at full stretch to take at the second attempt.
A minute later a Wade header from a Norris cross flashed past his left upright and United pressing high and quick to pick up second balls were looking the sharper.
However Buckie began to show more shape in the middle of the park and although Rodger was his usual imperious self in that department it began to be noticeable that United were being contained there in a way which tended to cut off the supply to Wade [often alone up top] and that MacIver and Norris were moving deeper and deeper to find the ball.
In the 20th minute in pretty well their first serious attack Pugh slipped the ball on to Maclennan whose attempt to play in Peters was intercepted by Crawford who attempted to clear the ball but sliced his effort badly enough for the ball to birl a few feet in the air and land no more than a step away from PETERS who simply sidefooterd it into the net from the edge of the 6 yard box.
It took only a couple of minutes for Buckie to extend their lead.
A break down the right from a ball played from centre midfield brought an exchange of passes between Scott ADAMS and Peters that left home centre back Kieran Adams stranded and his Buckie namesake clear to skelp the ball low past the left hand of MacDonald .
To their credit Formartine did not press the panic button and looked to have resumed their normal passing game and were playing some reasonably composed stuff and managed to get enough players forward to have a press in the Buckie final third.
This earned them a couple of unrewarded corners the better of which found Wade about to pull the trigger after the ball was head flicked his way by Mclean but Munro got close enough to force a block.
In the next ten minutes the game looked to have settled to a more end to end pattern before Buckie struck again.
In the aftermath of a United push that stalled at the front of the Buckie box United were caught on the hop by a simple route one effort where the ball was lumped up the park to Peters who was initially in the centre circle.
Home keeper Macdonald had been on a stravaig up the park and well forward of his station.
PETERS clocked that and simply lobbed the ball over his head for the third.
The ball had gone from near the Buckie 18 yard line to the back of the United net in less time than it took the keeper to reach his goal line.
There’s no team in the Highland League can give Buckie a three goal start but United at least had the spirit to try and despite the embarrassment of that 37th minute debacle, gave themselves a sniff of a chance by pulling one back two minutes before the interval.
A prodigious throw in from MacLean about twelve yards up from the left corner was hurled into the goalmouth and head flicked on to RODGER at the back post who rose above everyone else to crash a mighty downward header into the net.
An early second half goal would bring United back into serious contention and they clearly started with that aim.
However after ten minutes of high tempo stuff from both sides another catastrophe struck.
In a tussle between Spink and McCabe near the left touchline about thirty yards out from goal, the ref decreed the former’s tackle more sinful than latter’s retaliation to it and issued Spink a red
card and McCabe a yellow.
That would have daunted most teams but United stuck to their task and by pressing as many as possible of their remaining ten as high up the park as possible as often as they could, they went some way to offsetting Buckie’s numerical advantage.
It reduced space in which to operate but they still worked Buckie impressively hard confining them to a few breakaways which United were able to contain.
