Lossiemouth 0
Wick Academy 3
League

Match Report

Newspaper extract from Caithness Courier - Wed, Dec 5, 2018 and Mel Roger..

Wick Academy showed true grit on Saturday as second-half goals from Danny Mackay, Ross Allan and Craig Gunn gave them a 3-0 away victory over Lossiemouth, their 4th league win in a row.
The game marked three milestones with Danny Mackay making his 100th League appearance, Michael Steven making his 200th League appearance and Alan Farquhar taking the field for his 300th competitve appearance for the club.
Lossiemouth looked a lot more organised and nothing like the team that played at Harmsworth Park earlier in the season - A good entertaining game though - both teams had their chances - a superb save by Stewart Black from Andrew Hardwick prevented Wick from going in 1 up at half time - and Wick had the post to thank midway thru the second half when a fizzing shot from 20 yards by Aaron Hamilton thumped off the woodwork. A sigh of relief all round for Wick when Danny Mackay's shot from the edge of the 18 yard box found its way to the back of the net on 65 minutes.
The goal released some of the tension in the Wick players, passes started flowing and a game that could have gone either way for the previous hour almost instantly looked more comfortable for Academy with Ross Allan and Craig Gunn putting the game to bed with two further late goals.
To say it wasn’t a display of fancy, free-flowing football at Grant Park would be an understatement but the bottom line is that Wick landed the three points.
Manager Tom McKenna said: “It was more a gritty performance than a polished one.
“I can rattle off a number of games where we’ve played good, attractive football and not got any-thing for our efforts. “It was good to see that side of the lads. Ideally you want to play a good passing game and get lots of goals. Sometimes you have to put in a workmanlike display in order to grind results out and it was good to see the players have that in their locker.
“I have to give Lossiemouth a lot of credit. They’ve come on a long way since we beat them 8-0 at our place earlier this season. They were very organised, very deter-mined and had good energy levels.
“Up until the first goal, I would have to say that the game could have gone either way. We looked comfortable in possession but there’s always that niggling feeling at the back of your mind that this might not be your day.
“At half-time I just said to the boys that we would have to be patient. We hadn’t done much wrong and, compared to their line-up, we still had a lot more quality about us.
“We started off with a 4-3-3 but went 4-2-4 in the second half in or-der to give us a bit more width.
“I put Ross Allan on the left and Craig Gunn on the right and told them to try and get behind their defence and whip in balls for Danny [Mackay] and Marc [Macgregor] in the box.
“That paid off as we looked more of an attacking threat in the second half.”

Click on the link below to read a newspaper report for this match.