Brechin aim to avoid joining list of shocks

Brechin City and Darvel conclude the Scottish Cup third round this evening, with the Angus side aiming to avoid joining a weekend of shocks.

Ambitious West of Scotland League side Darvel make the trip to Glebe Park aiming to follow in the footsteps of Banks O'dee, Clydebank and Ayrshire neighbours Auchinleck Talbot in eliminating more illustrious names from the national competition.

Hamilton suffered one of the worst results in their history when Tommy Sloan's Talbot claimed their scalp with a 1-0 win at Beechwood Park through Graham Wilson's strike on the hour mark.

Clyde followed Elgin City in tumbling to Clydebank when strikes from Jamie Darroch and Nicky Little saw the Bankies win at Holm Park, while the Dee also claimed a famous 2-1 win over League One strugglers East Fife at Spain Park.

While the result at Falkirk was not much of a shock, the comments of Bairns boss Paul Sheerin did raise eyebrows following the 2-1 home loss to Championship hopefuls Raith Rovers.

Reghan Tumilty was sent off for the victorious visitors and Sheerin, inset, gave a damning assessment of his side’s defending.

“I’m sick of standing here saying we will continue to get better,” he said, “maybe we can’t. We need to show more pride in keeping the ball out of our net.”

The Fife side’s league colleagues Inverness and Morton drew their allchampionship tie, as did Queen of the South, at League One leaders Cove.

Championship leaders Kilmarnock edged past Queen’s Park while Arbroath and Ayr United also progressed to join Raith, Partick and the 12 Premiership entrants, in the fourth round draw which will be made after the game at Glebe Park and shown live on BBC Scotland.