The goalscoring plumber McCoist says is a legend

Rory McAllister helped Peterhead win three League 2 titles - and Cove Rangers win Leagues 1 & 2

Scottish Cup, second round - Formartine United v Buckie Thistle

Venue: North Lodge Park, Pitmedden Date: Friday, 24 October Kick-off: 19:45 BST

Coverage: Watch live on BBC Scotland, BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport online and the BBC Sport app.

Rory McAllister must be the most famous plumber in Scottish football.

Lauded by Ally McCoist no less, the 38-year-old goalscoring phenomenon is plotting more Scottish Cup success as his Formartine United side take on Highland League rivals Buckie Thistle in front of the BBC cameras in the second round of the Scottish Cup.

More about plumbing and McCoist in a moment, but how different this story could have been had McAllister decided to keep goal rather than score them.

"My son is actually a goalkeeper, he's 11," he says. "I was a similar age to him when I changed [from being a keeper] to being a striker.

"I started off locally with Middlefield Wasps in Aberdeen. I played there from about eight to 14 or 15. That's when I started getting trials with clubs.

"I was at Celtic, Rangers, all these clubs and then I went down to Chelsea a couple of times and eventually Aberdeen came in and offered me a full-time contract."

After a year learning his football trade, McAllister joined Inverness Caledonian Thistle, with his first senior goal coming in the Scottish Cup at the age of 18 in a 1-1 draw with Ayr United.

"I started building up the goals and got picked for Scotland as I was growing through the age groups," he recalls.

"Then I just hit a brick wall and was going backwards. And that was when I joined Brechin."

This was 2009 and Glebe Park and its famous hedge were about to witness the birth of a lower-league legend.

McAllister would score 26 goals in the 2009-10 season and 25 goals in the 2010-11 season.

"It was brilliant," he says. "It was where I made a name for myself - at part-time level scoring goals."

Those two seasons put him on the map. However, as far as McAlister's career is concerned, that map really starts and ends in the north-east of Scotland.

Next stop was Peterhead, where the goals continued to flow. The 2013-14 season was particularly memorable, as he found the net 33 times in 35 matches.

In the decade that followed McAllister's breakthrough campaign with Brechin City, he would average more than 24 goals a season.

He enjoyed spells with Cove Rangers and Montrose along the way, the name Rory McAllister a virtual ever-present on the Sportscene Results vidiprinter.

Nets continued to bulge and, in 2024, he became only the third player to reach 250 Scottish league goals since World War Two, joining the illustrious company of Gordon Wallace and Ally McCoist.

The Rangers legend was full of praise in a video message posted on social media, describing McAlister as "a legend of the SPFL".

Not bad for a part-time footballer, part-time plumber.

Away from terrorising defenders, McAllister spends half his time with plunger in hand. He must be good at plumbing, because when the inevitable offers came in to make football his sole occupation, he turned them down.

"Every time I was offered the chance to go full-time, there was always just something going on in my life at the time, or it just didn't suit me at the time work-wise," he says.

"Or even the contracts you got offered at times wasn't as good as what you could earn.

"That's sometimes the way you have to look at it. You have to look after what is best for you and your family. A lot of the times, it just wasn't worth it."

A jack of two trades, master of them both. You get a sense from this most down-to-earth of goalscoring heroes that football is every bit as much of a vocation as plumbing.

Not that he is oblivious to the highs he has enjoyed along the way. A winner for Peterhead at Ibrox against Rangers back in 2013, that time he scored five goals in a single match against Falkirk in 2015, a brace in a Scottish Cup quarter-final for Brechin against Premiership side St Johnstone.

Now almost 20 years since he opened his Scottish Cup goalscoring account, another adventure on the road to Hampden looms large – this time at Formartine's North Lodge Park in the village of Pitmedden, 16 miles north of Aberdeen.

After joining in the summer, McAllister's Formartine are looking forward to this moment in the national spotlight against Highland League rivals Buckie in front of the Sportscene cameras.

"It's brilliant," he adds. "It's a good community club and you see the same faces every week, they're nice people.

"It's good for them to get the recognition as well, the staff that do all the work and the manager. It's good for the players who haven't played on TV as well - and a bit of recognition for the Highland League."

Watch our interview with Rory McAllister during live coverage of the match on BBC Scotland, BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport online and the BBC Sport app from 19:30 on Friday.