After defeat to Buckie Thistle on Saturday Formartine United’s Stuart Smith wants to set up another meeting between the sides in the Morrison Motors (Turriff) Aberdeenshire Shield.
United take on Aberdeen at North Lodge Park tonight in the competition’s last quarter-final.
The prize for the winner is a trip to Victoria Park in January to face Buckie, who defeated Formartine 3-1 in the GPH Builders Merchants Highland League Cup at the weekend.
Defender Smith said: “It’s always good to have a game quite quickly after a defeat.
“Hopefully we can put in another good performance, it’s another cup competition and we need to try to win and get through to the next round.
“It’s a chance to try to reach another semi-final and play Buckie again.
“It would be good to get another game against them after Saturday, so hopefully we can win this tie.”
Could Dons include first-team faces
Smith isn’t sure how strong an Aberdeen side Formartine will face this evening.
Generally, the Dons have fielded their under-18s in the Evening Express Aberdeenshire Cup and Aberdeenshire Shield.
But with the first-team currently out of action due to the World Cup shutdown, Smith is braced for the possibility of facing some of Jim Goodwin’s squad.
The 33-year-old added: “In one sense it might a bad time to play Aberdeen, because we don’t know what sort of team they could field.
“I’d imagine they might have a few of the boys that are in and around the first-team playing,
“But whoever we come against we need to look after ourselves first and foremost and try to put in a good performance.
“Whoever we’re up against it will be tough, because they’re good players, they’re full-time, so you know they’ll be fit and well-coached.
“But we need to try to do ourselves justice with our performance and if we do that hopefully we can get a positive result.”
Full Time 1-3
— Formartine United Football Club (@FormartineUtd) December 3, 2022
On Saturday Formartine lost three goals in a 15-minute spell in the first half which hampered their chances of victory.
Smith said: “We started the game well, but if you give away three goals like we did you give yourself a mountain to climb and you’re probably not going to get back into it against a side like Buckie.
“In the second half, I think we were pretty good, but our reaction when we lost goals in the first half wasn’t great.
“The manager spoke about that and we got a bit fortunate with the goal we scored.
“We did better in the second half without really threatening too much.”
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