The highlight of Fraserburgh’s 7-0 win over Lossiemouth affair was an opportunistic hat-trick from prolific striker, Scott Barbour, and a double from his strike-partner, Sean Butcher.
With Broch boss Mark Cowie attending a wedding, his assistant, James Duthie said: “We were good and we looked very dangerous going forward.
“The most pleasing thing for me was the amount of chances we created, although I thought that Lossie started the game quite well and were quite competitive early on.
“Our final ball could have been better though that is probably being picky as overall I thought we had a lot of good performances, and I thought the three substitutes who came on were excellent and really contributed to the game.”
Barbour’s treble
The Broch took the lead in the ninth minute when the home defence failed to clear a Paul Campbell cross, the ball found Barbour who swivelled and clipped the ball past Logan Ross in the Lossie goal from six yards.
Fraserburgh doubled their advantage in the 23rd minute when a looping Logan Watt cross was headed up and over his own goalkeeper by Coasters’ centre half Lewis McAndrew.
Scott Barbour goal (77) Broch with a left footed shot from 11 yards into the bottom left corner of the net after Zane Laird passed the ball to him to extend it to 7-0 Broch for Barbour’s hat trick #theBroch
— Fraserburgh FC (@FraserburghFC) August 13, 2022
On the stroke of half-time Fraserburgh made it 3-0 when Campbell flicked on to Barbour and the reigning Breedon Highland League player of the year gave Ross no chance from eight yards.
Four minutes after the restart Butcher got in on the act when he nodded the ball home from close-range and seven minutes later Butcher headed home another, helped by indecision from home keeper Ross who thought about coming for the cross, and didn’t.
The Broch made it 6-0 in the 76th minute, two substitutes, Zane Laird and Aidan Combe combined for the latter to fire home and 60 seconds later Barbour completed his hat-trick with a sizzling 15 yard drive.
Broch too good
Lossiemouth manager Joe Russell said: “We started off relatively well and we did think that perhaps their first goal was offside.
“But it was two really poor errors from ourselves which led to their second goal and the third one right before half time just took the sting right out of us.
“Scott Barbour was a real threat throughout the 90 minutes, we tried to put in an extra body in there to try and cope with him but in the end they were just too good for us.”
Buckie Thistle 8-0 Strathspey Thistle
Buckie romped the battle of the Jags with recent signing, former Strathspey and Elgin City striker Josh Peters, helping himself to four second half goals.
Buckie boss Graeme Stewart said: “We could have been about 6-0 up by half-time, we didn’t finish all that well, that was my only criticism in that first half.
“But we scored the second goal at just the right time, just before the break and that helped us to relax a wee bit.
“I had a wee go at my strikers at half-time and Kyle MacLeod, and especially Josh Peters reacted, as Kyle scored and Josh grabbed four.”
The home side scored within five minutes with a great left-foot strike from Sam Urquhart and just before the break Jack Murray rose to send a towering header from an Andy MacAskill corner into the back of the net.
Just after the restart danger-man Peters ran half the length of the pitch and finished with a composed strike before going on to score three more, the other Buckie goal, the fourth, coming from Kyle MacLeod.
The only negative aspect on the day for the home side was the straight red-card for player-assistant manager Lewis MacKinnon, before Declan Milne added an eighth for the home side soon after.
Strathspey manager Charlie Brown made no excuses, and said: “If Buckie had taken their chances we could have found ourselves five or six goals down at half-time.
“It was a really tough day for us but hopefully the boys will learn from this experience as they are going to come up against a few sides who are as good as Buckie were here today.”