Brechin City manager Andy Kirk was pleased his Breedon Highland League champions managed to see off resolute Formartine United to start the new season with a win.
The Hedgemen prevailed 1-0 at Glebe Park courtesy of Ewan Loudon’s second half penalty.
However, they found it difficult against a United side who played for an hour with 10 men following Paul Campbell’s dismissal, before also losing Johnny Crawford in stoppage time.
Brechin boss Kirk said: “I’m pleased to get the win and get off to a good start.
“If you want to be up there challenging for trophies you need to start the season well.
“You know what this league’s like, if you’re trying to play catch-up it’s difficult.
“We’ll keep trying to improve and keep trying to add one or two and hopefully we can be up there challenging again.”
On the red card incidents, Kirk added: “The first one I can see it’s a booking. He (Campbell) has led with his arm.
“The second one looked the same so I can understand why the ref sent him off.
“For the second sending off from our dugout I don’t think he (Crawford) was trying to hurt anyone at all but it looked like he went in with two legs.
“The law of the game is that if you lunge in you run the risk and I thought that was the case.”
Incidents aplenty
In the early stages Spencer Moreland fired over for Brechin and at the other end a good Hamish Thomson block denied Julian Wade.
On 29 minutes Formartine were reduced to 10 with Campbell’s dismissal.
The striker had been booked nine minutes earlier for catching Michael McArthur with his elbow.
Then, as he tussled with Euan Spark, Campbell’s hand appeared to catch the City defender in the face and referee Greg Soutar was quick to brandish another yellow card followed by a red.
Formartine manager Stuart Anderson said: “The first one I’m too far away, but with the second one if that’s a booking we’ll get a lot of sending offs over the course of the season.
“I think he’s just trying to use his body like strikers do and unfortunately he’s been sent off.
“Everything’s on camera and once we see it back we’ll have a better look.”
Lifted by having the numerical advantage the Hedgemen upped the tempo in search of the opener and Fraser MacLeod was twice denied by goalkeeper Ewen Macdonald with shots from the edge of the box.
That aside, United were excellent defensively and restricted Brechin to few chances.
But in the 77th minute the breakthrough arrived. A Brechin trialist, believed to be Liam Duell, exchanged passes with MacLeod before bursting into the box and going down under Rhys Thomas’ sliding challenge.
Ref Soutar pointed to the spot and Loudon fired into the bottom left corner.
In the closing stages City were close to a second with the trialist scuffing an effort wide from eight yards.
Formartine then lost Crawford in the third minute of injury time as he was shown a straight red card for a lunging challenge on MacLeod just inside the Brechin half.
The United defender has been fouled by McArthur in the build-up with referee Soutar playing advantage which led to the incident occurring.
That meant after Crawford had been dismissed Formartine received a free-kick which they nearly scored from.
Macdonald sent it into the box and Kieran Adams’ looping header came off the junction of post and bar before Brechin scrambled the ball to safety.
Positives to take
Anderson added: “You never like to get beat, but I’m happy with the performance the boys put in.
“We had to play for 60 minutes with 10 men which is difficult against the champions and it took a penalty to beat us.
“We’re unlucky not to score and it’s probably what we deserved, but we need to take it on the chin and take the positives out of the performance.
“(With the penalty) it was too far away and there were a lot of bodies there, I spoke to Rhys and he said it’s a bit of a tangle.”
Asked for his view on Crawford’s red card, Anderson said: “I think there’s a foul to us before it and it’s maybe a bit of tiredness from Johnny the way he goes in.
“We’ll look at it back and if we don’t feel it’s a red card we’ll appeal it.”
