Cove Rangers hit Lossiemouth for six with former East Fife forward Paul McManus helping himself to a hat-trick, his first in Highland League football.
Cove Rangers manager John Sheran was only concerned with his side’s performance and result, no matter what title rivals Buckie Thistle were doing in the their match against Formartine.
Sheran said: “We set out to win the game and hoping to get a few goals and in the end it was a really good team performance.
“Paul McManus has shown his quality in the games he has played for us this season and his play was excellent. He scored three goals and also had another two disallowed.
“Lossie got a penalty when the score was 4-1 with a clumsy challenge from Jason Brown, it was a soft award but the important thing was Stuart McKenzie saved the penalty.
Sheran and his players were concentrating solely on events at Grant Park, when he added: “We didn’t know anything about the game between Formartine and Buckie until our game had finished.
“If we start worrying about events elsewhere we would not be focused on our game, that was the key thing.
“We targeted taking it to the last game of the season. In October we were nine points behind but now we are just two points behind the leaders, Brora Rangers.”
Lossie assistant manager Stuart Cameron said: “Cove were the better team and deserved the win, we always knew it was going to be tough and tried to keep it tight for as long as possible. But with Buckie also going for the league as well we decided when we were 2-1 down to gamble a bit, we left ourselves open.”
Cove opened the scoring in the 10th minute through McManus but within four minutes the Coasters were back on level terms with a Bryan Bell effort.
Ryan Stott restored Cove’s advantage eight minutes from the break and Daniel Park settled any nerves in the visitors’ camp when he made it 3-1 in the 64th minute.
Two minutes later Cove were cruising when Stuart Walker found himself totally unmarked at the back post and to ram home number four. Lossie then had a chance to reduce the deficit when Brown pulled back Ross Archibald in the box but Cove goalkeeper McKenzie dived to save Martin Charlesworth’s penalty.
McManus notched his own second and Cove’s fifth goal in the 75th minute and completed his hat-trick from 12 yards a minute from time.
