Inverurie Locos impressed with a convincing 3-1 home victory against Forres Mechanics to move to fourth in the Highland League table.
Locos manager Neil Cooper was pleased with his side’s display ahead of Wednesday’s Aberdeenshire Cup meeting at Bellslea against Fraserburgh.
He said: “We knew it would be difficult against a good Forres side.
“We started well with the first goal resulting from the handball, with Neil Gauld dispatching the penalty well as he normally does.
“The second goal came from a great diagonal by Ryan Broadhurst and Ryan Stott showed good composure to finish.
“We had another couple of good opportunities in the first half that we didn’t manage to take.
“We passed the ball well and defended well and our third was due to a great link-up by Hunter and Jamie Michie with Gauld in space for a great finish.
“It was always end to end and we knew they’d come at us.
“They got one goal back to give them a lift but we saw it through.”
The opener came after 10 minutes and caused consternation for the visiting camp with a handball decision given against an extremely unfortunate Aaron Hamilton. Gauld sent his spot kick firmly low into the right corner.
Five minutes later, there was a moment to forget for Forres’s highly experienced goalkeeper Stuart Knight.
A long searching pass by Locos’ stand-in captain Broadhurst was met by a great first touch from Stott and he rolled the ball home with Knight failing to follow the running of the ball.
At the other end Andy Reid made a superb diving save to deny Andrew Macrae before Hunter and Gauld went close to adding to the Locos lead.
That advantage duly extended to three in 51 minutes when Michie squared for Gauld to net his sixth of the season.
Forres gradually looked for a proper foothold in the game and they pulled one back through captain Stuart Soane in the 74th minute when he raced away from the Locos defence and fired high into the roof of the net.
Soane should have scored again in 81 minutes but missed the target with a header from an Allan MacPhee corner. The visitors kept going but were unable to net again.
Can Cans boss Charlie Rowley bemoaned the bad start, saying: “It wasn’t explained who had given the penalty, the referee or his far-side assistant.
“The hand of Aaron Hamilton was above his shoulder, it hit his hand so by the rules it was a spot kick. There was no taking into account he was only a few yards away. We felt hard done by.
“A calamitous error by our goalkeeper gave us a mountain to climb.
“Locos deserved the win but we made a good fist of trying to get back into the game. There are areas we need to work on.”
