Another Highland sting

INVERNESS Caledonian Thistle maintained their reputation as Scotland’s cup shock specialists when they knocked Hearts out of the Tennent’s Scottish Cup with a comprehensive 3-1 victory at Tynecastle yesterday.

Although the result did not quite surpass the most famous night in the Highland club’s history, when they eliminated Celtic in Glasgow two years ago, this was another magnificent display form the First Division team, who belied their serious cash problems, to engineer Hearts’ first home defeat in the Scottish Cup for 12 years.

Nor could anyone argue that the visitors deserved their triumph, after they took the lead through Ross Tokely and added two second-half goals from Dennis Wyness and David Bagan to render Gary Wales’s strike irrelevant.

There were heartwarming scenes afterwards as Inverness captain Bobby Mann, who picked up the man-of-the-match award for his sterling efforts, spoke of his joy at moving into the quarter-finals of the competition where they will now meet Dundee or Partick Thistle.

"It’s great to go to a big SPL club and beat them, and it’s a good psychology to adopt the approach that we’re in a no-lose situation in these games," said Mann. "The support we received from our fans is always tremendous on these occasions, and we always have a great belief in ourselves. As far as I am concerned, I don’t care who we get in the next round. In fact, bring on the Rangers!"

The outcome was doubly pleasing for the scorer of the decisive goal, Bagan, who was a member of Kilmarnock’s Scottish Cup-winning team in 1997, but who has since struggled to fulfil his potential. "I think we would have been happy with a replay, but it was a terrific feeling to score here, and, let’s face it, when you have a situation out there where all the guys are playing brilliantly, you don’t have to worry about the opposition ," said Bagan. "I was in seeing the manager, [Steve Paterson], a couple of weeks ago and he’s told me that Inverness are trying to slash their wage bill, and that I’ll be free to leave at the end of the season. But you never know what might happen if we can build on this result, and particularly if we end up with a big match against Rangers or Celtic in the future. Because, who knows, the extra revenue could help us out of our difficulties."

There were no excuses offered by the vanquished Hearts manager, Craig Levein, who was deprived of several influential players, including Steven Pressley and Kevin McKenna, and fielded a makeshift defence.

"I have been praising the team recently for taking responsibility and working extremely hard, but they didn’t give us that little but extra we needed today," said Levein. "We defended poorly for all the goals, and we definitely missed Steven, but I don’t want to take anything away from Inverness. They thoroughly deserved their win."

Taken from the Scotsman