Bollan hails players’ character and ‘brilliant’ game plan after Forfar promoted

Forfar have bounced back to League 1 at the first time of asking after demolishing Peterhead on their own Balmoor patch 5-1 to complete a 7-2 aggregate success. The Loons, who had led League 2 for almost the entire season before being deposed by Arbroath with two games to go, made the most of their second chance, their win relegating the Blue Toon back to the fourth tier for the first time since 2011.

The key to Forfar’s success was a fast start, Lewis Milne running clear after a mistake by Ryan Strachan to open the scoring after five minutes.

Former Peterhead favourite David Cox side-footed home a second with 17 minutes gone to put Forfar 4-1 ahead in the tie.

Six minutes into the second half Danny Denholm curled home to put Gary Bollan’s side further out of sight and when Aiden Malone added another goal with a backheel the promotion party grew louder.

Scott Brown slid a shot in from 20 yards to give Peterhead some consolation, before Jim Lister teed up Josh Peters to slam home a fifth Forfar goal of the afternoon with seven minutes left.

Bollan said: “I am absolutely delighted that we have secured promotion. The character of the players was called into question by people outside of the club but they answered that in the best possible way.

“We were two goals down to Annan in the play-off semifinal and got through and we were behind to Peterhead in the first leg of the final as well.

“I told people that we were coming up here to attack Peterhead and not sit on our lead. The game plan worked brilliantly.”

Peterhead manager Jim Mcinally said: “It was a dreadful way to lose a play-off game. I wanted us to go out and make a real go of things – however, we went down really meekly.”

“We gave ourselves a chance of avoiding relegation by making the play-offs but that was not a performance worthy of a play-off. There were going to be changes here and there will probably be more now.”