A first-half hat-trick from Dane Ballard was the highlight of the Banff club’s comprehensive victory against Rothes who have now conceded 17 goals in three matches.
Chris Blackhall and Graeme Watt were also on the scoresheet for the home club with Ballard’s hat-trick being the first since Craig Simpson scored three against Turriff United three years ago.
Deveronvale manager Steve Dolan said: “I stressed to the lads before the game that attitude was so important going into a game like this. Rothes have already outplayed us 2-1 in August and I was determined that was not going to happen again. The first-half performance was just what I asked them for as we controlled the flow of the game.
“Dane Ballard has been away from Highland League football for five seasons now and he missed three months of this season with a bad injury. But he now has seven goals and is starting to find his feet at this level again.”
Rothes manager Fraser Bremner was fuming with his players’ first-half showing and said: “It was probably our worst showing since I came into the job after having worked all week about how we wanted to go about tackling Vale.
“We only started doing it when we were four goals down, which is really disappointing. The fact we gifted Vale two soft goals in as many minutes was annoying.
“It is incredibly disappointing as we have far better players than what was on show.
Despite the fact that we started the day on the same amount of points as Vale the gap between the teams was massive.”
Dan Smith gifted possession to Grant Noble in the 12th minute who set up Ballard to score from 10 yards before the attacker netted another with a six-yard header three minutes later after Scott Davidson failed to deal properly with a clearance.
The forward claimed his treble in the 38th minute meeting a Paul Sutherland cross with his head from 10 yards before Blackall claimed number four a minute from the break with a 20-yard shot.
Watt added a fifth with a deflected shot from the edge of the box with 13 minutes remaining.
