A sumptuous free kick from Sam Mackay helped Wick Academy to a comfortable 3-1 victory against Clachnacuddin.
Wick manager Gordon Connelly was pleased to see his side overcome a stubborn Clach defence and said: “We told the players at half time they would need to be patient because their game plan was to stop us playing. They were probably the most defensive team I’ve seen play up here.
“It looked like it was going to take a bit of luck or a scramble or a moment of magic, like we got from Sam, to make the breakthrough.
“After that they had to come out and change their tactics and we were able to pick them off.”
The defeat was Clach’s third in succession although manager Iain Polworth was encouraged by his side’s defensive discipline: “We needed to keep it a lot tighter than we have done in the last few weeks and we did that for the first hour.
“But the whole concept of the game changed when they scored the first goal of the game.
“We knew if we were going to get anything from the game we would have to score first and we had a few opportunities to do that in the first half.
“We’ve conceded three goals again, but we were a lot tighter than we had been in our defeats to Buckie and Keith in the past few weeks.”
Clach proved a tough nut to break down in the first half as they sat deep and exploited the pace and power of Daniel Maclennan on the break.
The game plan was going perfectly, but once the home side opened the scoring thanks to Mackay’s curling effort in the 62nd minute there was only going to be one winner.
Steven Anderson doubled the lead with 15 minutes left when he controlled James Pickles’ long ball, side-stepped Ross MacKillop and calmly rolled the ball home.
Davie Allan made it three soon after, scoring past John Campbell in the Clach goal at the second attempt before substitute Liam Shewan grabbed a late consolation for the visitors when he tapped in at the back post from Blair Lawrie’s cutback.