Highland League: Huntly aim to stop leaders Brechin City making it 20 league wins in a row in Glebe Park encounter
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Brechin City are pushing hard for a Highland League record run - but Huntly want to throw a spanner in the works.
The Glebe Park men lead the way this season with eight wins out of eight, and have won 19 consecutive league matches in addition to a strong finish to last term.
Buckie Thistle broke the all-time Highland League record of 20 wins in a row in 2021-22, going on to clock up 23 victories on the spin before drawing with Wick Academy in April.
City will fancy clocking up victory number 20 tonight and closing in on the magical 23 mark when they host a Huntly side determined to maintain their own mini revival.
Back-to-back wins have taken Huntly from the bottom three to 11th spot in the last fortnight.
A poor start by Allan Hale's side left them languishing at the wrong end of the table, before a 4-1 success at Lossiemouth and Saturday's 2-0 victory over Strathspey Thistle propelled them upwards.
Manager Hale knows the scale of the task facing his team at Brechin tonight but says his players will be up for the challenge.
"What makes it tougher is going down there on a Wednesday night," he said. "Making that distance travel where boys are coming from Elgin and all over the place to play against a team of their quality doesn't make it any easier.
"Brechin have won every game and from reports you hear they have been very comfortable in the majority of games they have played.
"We know the task at hand for sure but our players are playing relatively well at the minute and we know we have quality at the top end of the pitch that can hurt a lot of teams in our league.
"If we keep the structure and the shape as well as we have in recent games - Pollok apart - then hopefully we can spring a surprise.
"It's a tough game. Brechin have players who are far too good to be playing at Highland League level. You see how good they are getting a draw up at Caley Thistle last week (losing on penalties) so that shows their quality.
"But we will have a game plan that hopefully the players can carry out well and you never know on the night. Football is a funny game."
Hale's reference to the 6-0 Scottish Cup defeat at Pollok highlights a match which he hopes was a blip in his team's recovery from their slow start.
Last week he added former Buckie Thistle winger Callum Murray to his squad after completing a transfer from Forres Mechanics, who signed Murray in the summer.
"He’s a player who’s won the league with Buckie and contributed to a successful Buckie team over the years," Hale said.
"Players like that don’t become available that often within the market. He’s someone we had kept tabs on for a long time and tried to bring him in during the summer.
"I still feel we never really addressed the top end of the pitch with the business we got done so we are always looking for the right type of person to become available and once we found out that he was from Forres we obviously tried to get the deal done, as did a few other clubs.
"I’m delighted he chose Huntly and hopefully he can enjoy his time with us.
"He played the full 90 (against Strathspey on his debut). It wasn’t really part of the plan but we had to make an early sub with Kyle Dalling going off with a muscular injury, so we had burned a sub within the first ten minutes.
"Cazzy did well, he’s not played too many 90 minute games, if any during the last couple of years.
"He came in and trained with the group on Wednesday and I felt it was a good opportunity to throw him in and get him off the mark.
"Although his sharpness isn’t quite there, he is getting familiar with how we want to play and I thought he acquitted himself well. You can certainly see the attributes and the quality he’s going to bring to our side.
"He can be pleased with his debut for sure."
Centre back Dalling picked up a muscle injury on Saturday and is a doubt to play at Brechin tonight.
