Ian Murray covered himself in all the glory when he scored a late winner to see his side through to the semi-final stages of the John Bell Pipeline Aberdeenshire Cup at the expense of the hark-working and well organised visitors.
Steve Dolan's threaded pass was inch perfect and wee Murray made an excellent job of finishing off the move with a trademark goal, his first competitive strike since re-joining the Banff club in the close season.
With just one change to Saturday's winning start to the campaign, Ross Bremner replacing the injured James Blanchard, Vale were out to end the run of their Aberdeen based rivals who were on an unbeaten fifteen game stretch which included picking up the Highland League Cup at the expense of the Banffers on the last day of last season.

Mike McKenzie should have put the Banffers one goal up when Ross McWilliam's cross from the right completely eluded Neil Cruickshank who rather strangely fell in a heap inside his own six-yard box but 'Mikee' failed to get any real power behind his back-post strike and Buchanan smothered his effort gleefully.

Robbie Brown was rather fortunate not to collect his first yellow card of the new season when he scythed down name-sake John Brown at the edge of his own box, Scott Fraser surprised a few by taking the set-price ahead of Brown but saw his curling effort finish well wide of it's intended target.

Neil Cruickshank came nervously close to finding the back of his own net as he attempted to clear a McWilliam cross inside his own six-yard box but fortunately for the young defender the ball landed on the roof of the net rather than it.
A John Brown floated cross was very nearly turned home by Gavin Hendry at the back post but the ball drifted harmlessly ahead of the in-rushing midfielder who had made good ground with a late run.

Kenny Gilbert was cautioned for retaliating when he was taken out late by Gary Clark who was also shown the same colour of card by referee Alan Freeland and from the resultant free-kick Gilbert saw his header

hit the top of the Cove crossbar on its way over after Mark Chisholm had cushioned the ball into his assistant manager's path.

While Cove boss John Sheran thought his side did enough to win the close encounter opposite number Gregg Carrol had his own opinion, "It was a tough match as while Cove are difficult to play against we made things hard for ourselves by passing up decent chances when they came along".
"We had a number of them and I think we could have done better with the ones we created. You've really got to grind it out, and for spells of the game we were in complete charge without turning our superiority into goals but hey I'm not too disappointed as we're into the next round which is just as important".