Willie Harvey admits Rutherglen Glencairn’s historic first venture into the Scottish Cup felt like a defeat after Kilwinning Rangers netted a stoppage time equaliser.
First Division Glens were on course for a cup upset when they led their West of Scotland Premier Division opponents 2-1 going into the final seconds, with two goals in two minutes from man of the match Jack McIlveen turning the game on its head after Mark Millar had broken the deadlock after 18 minutes.
However, as the clock ticked down it looked ominous for Glens when McIlveen was forced off injured with Harvey having made all three permitted substitutes.
And in stoppage time the hosts’ resolve was broken when Millar fired home a free-kick to earn Rangers a replay at Buffs Park this Saturday.
Gutted Harvey said: “It felt like a defeat getting so close to getting through.
“But 30 minutes into the game losing 1-0, if you had offered me a draw then I’d have bitten your hand off because we just didn’t perform at all during that time.
“My goalkeeper, Matt McGinley, kept us in it with two good saves and if we’d lost another goal at that point [1-0] I think we would have gone out.
“That’s not definite because I do know our boys have got a good fighting spirit and they step up when adversity kicks in, but it would have been very hard to come back from 2-0 down against a team like Kilwinning.
“It was still hard to take the equaliser because we were so close. I was looking at my watch, I knew it was the 90th minute and we gave away a free-kick that could have been avoided.
“Our defender has tried to nip in and steal the ball instead of just standing up to it, but I’m not going to blame anyone for that, it’s part and parcel of football.
“In the second half we caused Kilwinning a lot of problems and took the game to them.
“Towards the last 10 minutes when we’d got ourselves 2-1 up, we started tiring because we’d made all our substitutions and big Jack McIlveen picked up an injury, so we had to go down to 10 men.
“We were struggling a bit at that point and we could have ended up losing the game. We’ll take it on the chin because we are still in the cup and that’s the main thing at the moment.”
The town turned out for Rutherglen on Saturday with a strong home support cheering the side on. Harvey says it was a great advert for the game and hopes new-found fans will return to Hamish B Allan Stadium.
”The atmosphere was great,” he enthused. “Kilwinning brought a great support with them and we didn’t actually realise how good a support we had until we equalised.
“The noise we heard when we scored was great. There were a lot of people who hadn’t been there before and hopefully the game encouraged them to come back again. It was a great advert for our game.”
Yesterday's Scottish Cup first round draw handed the winners of the replay a home tie against Lowland League side Tranent on September 17.
Follow Lanarkshire Live Sport on Twitter via @LanLiveSport, like us on Facebook or find us on Instagram for the latest sports news, pictures and video.
