McBookie.com Superleague champions Banks o’ Dee maintained their perfect league record with a crushing eight-goal romp against Ellon United at The Meadows in what was only their ninth outing of the current campaign.
Jack Henderson opened the scoring for the Spain Park side after 16 minutes before Dean Lawrie made it two just four minutes later.
With half time approaching, Craig MacAskill scored number three to see the visitors go in at the break with a healthy advantage.
Dee replaced defender Darryn Kelly with Kacper Lewecki at the interval and, within 10 minutes of the restart, Michael Philipson notched the fourth to put the game well beyond United.
Philipson fired in his second on the hour mark before Marc Young got in on the act a couple of minutes later.
Centre-back Neale Allan fired in goal number seven after a mazy run and Lachie MacLeod completed the rout with a few minutes remaining.
Spain Park co-manager Jamie Watt was relieved to finally get a league match played.
He said: “It was pretty comfortable and we have a few Superleague games between now and Christmas, although playing Saturday and Wednesday almost continuously is tough on the boys.
“You would have got good odds on Dean Lawrie, Marc Young and Neale Allan all scoring and that was Neale’s first goal for a couple of years.
“He doesn’t even usually score at training, but that’s one of our strengths that we can get goals from a number of areas of the team.”
Watt admitted the Scottish Junior Cup exit at the hands of Lochee United the previous week was a hard one to take, and said: “That was really disappointing as I felt we could go fairly deep in the competition. Conditions were awful and it was a total lottery, but we lost a really soft goal.”
Dee are still in the Scottish Cup, however, with a home clash with League One basement boys East Fife to come on Saturday week.
Watt said: “We had them watched at the weekend, I’ve spoken to Paul Hartley (Cove Rangers boss) about them and we’ll do our homework.
“There should be a decent crowd for that one and we’ll just go and enjoy it.”
It’s another hectic week for the Spain Park outfit this week with trips to Kynoch Park tomorrow evening to face Keith in the Aberdeenshire Shield and Aberdeen Sports Village at the weekend to play Bridge of Don Thistle in the Superleague.
Recent signing Alan Redford picked up a knee strain in his first match for Dee last week and will miss tomorrow’s match, while Matthew Robertson is well on the road to recovery from the broken wrist he sustained earlier in the season.
