Buckie's Stenny boyhood

Par Gregor Buchanan is no stranger to Ochilview Park.

Yes he played there as an Airdrieonians player and again two weeks ago when the Pars faced but his experiences of the park go back much much further.

Gregor's father, Gordon Buchanan was Assistant Manager and Coach at Stenhousemuir for over a decade and was manager twice after the departures of both Brian Fairley and Jimmy Bone. Gregor's father is a former Scotland schoolboys captain who was on the books of Falkirk and Stenhousemuir.

As a result Gregor is probably more familiar with the ground than even Andy Stirling who spent over three seasons there as a player with both Stenny and East Stirling. Gregor explained to the website:-

"It is the ground that I watched games when I was growing up. My dad was Mr Stenhousemuir, I saw an article like that not long ago. It is somewhere that I like to go. As soon as it changed to AstroTurf schools played there and I played a lot of football there.

"It was good to see it filled behind the goal with all the Dunfermline fans there. They can really start a great atmosphere and especially at that ground. When we have the backing of them it can be a good day.

The 24 year old got used to playing on AstroTurf while at Airdrie. He was unbearten for them there against Stenny and even scored. He rates the new surface at Ochilview Park:-

"If you play on it every week I do think that it is a bit of an advantage. It had a different bounce and a different feel to it.

"We have been training on Astro this week. Football is meant to be played on grass but it is beneficial for many clubs to lay it. You just have to deal with it."

The centre back was as disappointed as anyone with the failure to take good chances at Peterhead last Saturday:-

"You just hope that those chances start flying in. We are due to run over the top of a team, if we start talking early goals. We need to make the football do the talking and maybe score five or six of a day.

"On Saturday I thought it was possibly the best that we had played all season. In the first seventy minutes we kept the ball and I could only see us winning the game to be honest. We should have gone on and killed the game by taking our chances.

"We have only conceded eight goals in the league. Overall we need to get back to scoring goals. Stenhousemuir are a big physical team and they will see free kicks and setpieces as a real chance to score.

"We have defended well all season but most teams are a threat when they are putting balls into the box. As defenders we need to make sure that we are doing our job from the first minute right through to the ninetieth."