Reaction

“The Wasps” progressed to the next round of this season’s William Hill Scottish Cup after defeating Highland League side Inverurie Loco Works at Recreation Park, Alloa today 3 – 0. Alloa started this game as favourites due to their SPFL standing, however Inverurie Loco’s had nothing to lose and in the first half of the game gave as good as they got. The match changed in the second half after manager Paul Hartley introduced Eddie Harty to be more direct and use his pace to get behind the visitors rearguard. This made the home side a far more dangerous proposition to Loco’s and after Kevin Cawley had put “The Wasps” ahead, the team never looked back and ran out comfortable 3-0 winners, pleased to be in the Fourth Round draw which takes place on Tuesday.

hartley after cup victory

That was a tough game for us today, I thought in the first half we were poor in terms of our intensity of play, our build up was far to pedestrian, that’s why I changed it at half-time. I brought Eddie Ferns on to bring a bit of pace to the game who would be a threat in behind their defence.  In terms of going through to the next round, brilliant, another clean sheet which I was pleased with, but in terms of how we played and kept the ball, I’m not happy. Eddie coming on at half-time changed the game, that is why we brought him on, to try and get in behind them because they were playing a high line and we kept on being caught offside, but his pace was a threat and he put in some good cross balls – so pleased with that. The goals were good, Kevin Cawley’s goal was a good finish, and pleased for Alex Salmon getting his first goal for the club, but the most pleasing thing was to get through the tie because I was worried about this tie today, I have been stressing that all week, it was really worrying as a manager because it is one of these ones which is a potential banana skin and you don’t want to be hitting the headlines the next day by going out the cup to Highland League opposition and that’s no disrespect to Inverurie Loco’s, they were good, they played some good stuff, they gave us a game today in which they gave us a fright. But again I say the main thing is we are in the draw for the next round of the tournament when the draw is made for the fourth round on Tuesday and we will look forward to that now. We want a big club, one of the big boys, that’s why you are in football – you want it for the players and the club, so we don’t mind who we get. Young Lewis Wilson had been doing well in the reserves, so he deserved his start today, he did well, why not throw him in, how are you going to see how young players react without giving them a chance, you don’t need to wait until a player is 20 or 21, Lewis is 17, and we wanted to see if he could handle the occasion and he did well.