Well my article last time has generated quite a fair bit of reaction from both many fans and officials alike of Forres Mechanics.
I have to say though that the majority were in favour of my point of view, but I guess you can’t please everybody all of the time. At the end of the day, it’s just one man’s opinion and this is the whole point of the article, to generate discussion and a fair and frank exchange of views on everything Forres Mechanics.
Now to football matters, when will the officials at the SHFL wake up and put some thought into who against and when the league fixtures are to be played – especially midweek games.
How ridiculous is it for Forres to travel all the way to Wick for an 8pm kick-off on a Wednesday night (09/09/15 ). With the players and officials having to take time off work to make the journey – it’s near impossible for the faithful fans to make that same commitment, resulting in lost revenues for the host team, something I’m sure is not welcome at any of the SHFL teams. This fixture itself is surely more suited for the traditional 3pm Saturday slot – come on SHFL get your act together and think more of the fans and please sort out for next season.
The match itself resulted in a 2-0 Wick Academy win which inflicted on us our third defeat in a row. But I’m assured that the performance was much better than of recent and maybe we can get our revenge when we are the hosts for the return New Year fixture.
On Saturday, September 12 we welcomed Deveronvale to Mosset Park for what unfortunately, even at this early stage of the season, was a fixture between two teams who find themselves in the bottom half of the league.
Both teams seemed to nullify each other in the first half with chances few and far between, which was punctuated all too frequently by an over zealous referee. His decision making leaving both sets of fans scratching their heads in amazement and he certainly wasn’t helped by his stand-side linesman (sorry, assistant referee) who didn’t seem to have the gumption to make any meaningful decisions by himself, often getting what looked like easy decisions wrong, resulting in a few choice remarks from the fans as to his ability to do the job.
Just after the hour mark Forres took the lead when a set-piece was sent into the box and Liam Baxter fired home from close range with the Vale defence screaming for offside… nae luck.
Then came the worst decision of the whole match when Graeme Grant made a lunge from behind on Vale’s Gary Harris in the penalty box, although he got the ball, referee Graham Beaton pointed to the penalty spot and to everyone’s amazement then produced a red card sending Grant off, all very harsh to say the least. Harris scored the resultant penalty to level the scores at 1-1.
The sending off seemed to galvanize the Forres players as they played much better with only 10 men. With nine minutes remaining though came the best moment of the game, Forres goalkeeper Stuart Knight sprung “ cat-like “ to clutch a Scott Henry 30 yard shot, he must have been fully 4ft off the ground horizontally when he caught the ball, this would surely have looked great on camera… If only they were here today! His quick thinking and throw out to Duncan Jones caught the Vale players napping and Jones’s pin-point long pass over the defence was so good it set Lee Fraser on his way to fire home what proved to be the winner.
A very welcome three points considering our recent poor form.
The downside though was he collided with Vale goalkeeper Grant Pennet and had to be stretchered off with what looked like a very serious knee injury, Pennet coincidently was our goalkeeper in our first league match away to Formartine.
We are all waiting with baited breath as to the outcome of Lee’s knee injury as we next take on Nairn County in the Menzies Distribution North Of Scotland Cup semi-final at home tomorrow, Wednesday, September 16.