Compared to the simple game I remember from back in the day, modern football is an exercise in precision.
What was a loosely-structured knockabout is now an exact science. The game pursues the idea of marginal gains; to squeeze every last ounce of talent, skill and performance out of players and turn it into the two percent improvement that will be enough to defeat opposition that exist a similar plane of talent.
In the big leagues, this means hiring staff to study players before, during, and after games, to rate the superstars and see if the small things they get wrong can be changed and added to that two percent.
In the lower leagues, however, cash reserves don’t allow for a secondary bench behind the manager filled with sports science students looking at iPads and playing Football Manager for real, so a different approach is needed.
One that doesn’t involve any fancy software or Pro-Zone nonsense. All you need are players willing to constantly and unrelentingly bawl at the referee, appealing for every 50/50 ball, free-kick, throw-in, corner, penalty, half time cup of tea and remote control in bed with the wife when the game is long done.
The ratio need not even be 50/50, 60/40, even 90/10; so long as there’s something to be asked for and someone to ask, it should be asked for, loudly and repeatedly and until club officials realise there’s possibly a market for ear plugs to be sold next to the programmes* and raffles at the next game.
And does it work?
Well it didn’t work for Formartine United in midweek. Hosting a rearranged fixture against neighbours Inverurie Loco Works, Formartine employed the above approach as they continued their attempt to salvage something from this season, even if that something is finishing above Locos in the league.
For long spells it looked like harassing the poor referee might just pay dividends, as Formartine went into the lead twice through Cammy Keith and Neil McVitie, with Neil Gauld levelling in-between.
The dismissal of Jamie Michie at 2-1 should have been enough to allow Formartine to see out the game, but with the hosts a goal up, a man to the good and still launching more appeals than Lenny Henry, the often mentioned lack of desire bit them on the rear.
Locos fought back equalise through Gauld and, with Formartine out of ideas that didn’t involve asking the beleaguered referee to lend a hand, Locos pinched all three points thanks to a last minute goal from substitute Jordan Leyden.
Formartine are now being bossed by Kris Hunter, formerly employed as manager/bouncer at Fraserburgh. This was his second game in charge and on his first outing his new side left Deveronvale with just a point, and even that came with the help of a late penalty equaliser.
An honours graduate of the Charlie Duncan School of Management, Hunter should be the man to hammer a sense of commitment and hard work into a side that will finish close to, if not more than, thirty points behind Brora Rangers. If the players aren’t interested in playing for him, the boys at Fraserburgh whom he led to victory in the Aberdeenshire Cup in October probably will be.
It’s about time Formartine stopped asking others for help, put their heads down and started getting the job done themselves.
*Oh yes, programmes. Tucking the programme for the originally scheduled game – now four months out of date and full of comments from previous manager Steve Paterson – inside a single sheet of paper to disguise it, and charging £2 for it? That’s not on, Formartine!