SLOAN: GIVE ME CUP RUN EVERY YEAR
GARY RALSTON
50 miles away in Glasgow, sitting in the away team’s dressing room at Celtic Park.
The Ayrshire juniors exited the Scottish Cup against Hearts but refused to be too downbeat despite their 4-0 defeat against Premiership opposition.
Wilson could even afford to be philosophical about his late strike, ruled out for offside, that would have given Talbot a consolation.
Wilson, still clad in his matchday kit, was told the score from the Etihad as Man City romped to a 6-0 victory over the Blues, including four goals in the first 20 minutes. He said: “Well there you go, it could be worse – we could be Chelsea.
“You see the other results, Celtic pumping St Johnstone 5-0 for example. I feel we’ve done not bad for a junior side coming here. “The gaffer
said and keep it tight as long as we could as that’s where we were successful against Ayr. If it was goalless at half-time you never know what might have happened. “But the first goal, free header? Defensively we were not good enough there. The second goal was a deflection and after the third we were really up against it. At half-time we just said, ‘Listen, let’s go out and win the half ’. “They ma y have a g.ralston@dailyrecord.co.uk beaten us 1-0 in the second half but we did our fans proud.
“We needed to come here and try to hold our own. I felt we did that. We also had a good couple of chances from Jamie Glasgow, as well as my big brother Graham. On another day we could have scored a couple of goals.
“We knew we were up against it from the off against a topquality side who were top of the league at the start of the season.
Wilson’s moment in the sun came at the death when he prodded a cross from sub Mark Shankland behind Colin Doyle in front of 1800 visiting fans.
But assistant Sean Carr’s flag cut short his celebrations.
He added: “That wee goal would have given our
fans sometry FROM BACK PAGE even as the gulf in quality was exposed as the Jambos marched into the quarterfinals of the Cup.
Christophe Berra, Demetri Mitchell, Steven MacLean and Aidan Keena shared the goals – and the Beechwood boys were even denied a consolation in injury time when Stephen Wilson’s effort was ruled offside.
Sloan said: “We take confidence in getting so far in this competition and the Ayr United victory in the last round is the biggest result this club has ever enjoyed.
“Hearts gave us a doing in the first half but we came back after the interval and we’ll take the positives, because Hearts are a good side.
“We want to be involved in this competition every year. We’d love to be involved in the Scottish Cup again and that means we have to win the league or our own Scottish Cup to get back here.
“We’ve had great times from the moment the draw was made in July and we’ve gone a round further than we’ve done before.
“It’s strange but even in the first half, when we were taking a bit of a doing I was still enjoying being here. This is what we want to be doing, where we want to be playing and I hope the boys take the positives of this into the other competitions we will play this season.
“Hopefully we will be back in the competition next year and we can go on a run again.”
The last time Hearts defeated Auchinleck in the Cup, a slender 1-0 victory in 2012, they went on to win the tournament.
Asked if Hearts can go all the way again Sloan said: “They impressed me. I watched them beat Kilmarnock 2-1 but are much more potent with Uche Ikpeazu up front.
“I have no complaints about the result but I was disappointed in the manner in which we lost the opener.
“We’d spoken about the danger of Christophe Berra and the physicality of Hearts. It was a cheap goal and made it an uphill climb straight away.
“There was a gulf in class in the first half and the return of Ikpeazu made a difference.
“We also carved out a few chances. We had a cutting edge but the first half killed us.”