Mark Cowie felt Fraserburgh returned to what he expects after battling back to draw with Formartine United in the Breedon Highland League.
The Broch were trailing 2-0 at North Lodge Park in the final 10 minutes, but staged a spirited recovery to draw 2-2 and earn a point.
Despite suffering only one defeat in 13 games, manager Cowie has been frustrated with his side’s performances.
But, on this occasion, he said: “That was more like my Broch.
“When Formartine go 2-0 up, you think: ‘that’s it.’ In weeks gone by, it might have been, but we had a desire about us that we haven’t seen in a while.
“If we hadn’t got something from the game it would have been a bit unjust I think.
“We maybe didn’t do enough to win it, but we did enough to get a point and I’m proud of the guys.
“I asked the guys to get back to exciting the fans and I think every fan here must have thought Fraserburgh played a good game.
“Win, lose or draw, I said to them: ‘I need my Broch back’, and I think I got that.
“I’m delighted with the performance and I’m happy with the point.”
Fraserburgh are fourth in the table, 10 points behind league leaders Brechin City having played a game more, and Cowie admits their title hopes are over.
He added: “We’re out of the league, but I wanted us to get back to playing the way we can and putting teams under pressure.
“We’ll have a say in it, but we won’t be winning the league.”
Positives for Pitmedden side
Third-placed Formartine are nine points off the summit, having played the same number of games as Brechin.
Despite giving up their lead, boss Stuart Anderson took positives from the contest with Fraserburgh.
He said: “I’ve not seen the league table, but there are a lot of games to be played.
“Teams like Brechin are going strong, but there are three or four others going strong as well.
“We take every week as it comes and keep battling away.
“In terms of how we played, going forward I felt we were always a threat. There’s a little bit of frustration that we’ve not won the game.
“Fraserburgh threw loads of bodies forward and we need to deal with it better.
“But overall, I’m not too disappointed because there were a lot of good performances.
“When you draw like that in the last few minutes, it’s frustrating, but you’ve got to take the positives out of it and there were a lot of them.”
Early on, Fraserburgh captain Willie West and Scott Barbour stung goalkeeper Ewen Macdonald’s palms with shots from the edge of the box.
In between, the Broch had a penalty appeal for handball dismissed by referee Lewis Brown when the sliding Stuart Smith blocked Greg Buchan’s effort.
After quarter of an hour, Formartine threatened. Adam Emslie’s drive from long range skidded off the surface before being blocked by the legs of goalkeeper Joe Barbour.
In the 37th minute, United could have opened the scoring when Emslie’s cross from the right broke for Graeme Rodger, but the Pitmedden skipper fired over from 10 yards.
However, a minute before the break, Rodger did break the deadlock. After a spell of pressure, Emslie found space on the right to cross and Rodger’s bullet header went in off the underside of the crossbar.
Dramatic second half
Two minutes after the break, the Broch almost equalised when Ross Aitken’s cross from the right clattered off the bar.
At the other end, Aitken made a vital intervention with a sliding block to thwart Aaron Norris after Emslie and Julian Wade combined in a rapid counter-attack.
Another good Formartine break saw them double their advantage in the 78th minute. Marc Lawrence’s pass released Norris on the right flank and his pinpoint cross was dispatched by Wade from inside the six-yard box.
But the Broch battled back in the closing stages.
On 83 minutes, Kieran Simpson knocked down Joe Barbour’s free-kick, and after Ryan Sargent’s effort had been blocked, Sean Butcher pounced to finish from eight yards with his first touch after coming on as a sub.
In the dying embers, another sub, Aidan Sopel, came close to equalising twice.
His second effort was a shot from 20 yards that Macdonald turned behind for a corner in the third minute of stoppage time.
The resultant Sopel set-piece was cleared as far as sub Connor Wood at the edge of the area and his header back towards goal broke for West to equalise from six yards.
Before time was up, Rodger was sent off – having been booked on 77 minutes for a slide tackle on Sopel, the midfielder received a second yellow card for a high challenge on Simpson.
