Never mind the whistler – we blew our chances admits Nade

The whistler had Jambos fans howling in disbelief at a number of his decisions as their side lost the semi-final at Hampden 2-0.

Goals from Barry Ferguson and Jean-Claude Darcheville sent Walter Smith's side through to March's Cup final at the national stadium, but McCurry found himself the main talking point in the stands.

The referee waved away claims for a penalty kick in the first half after Carlos Cuellar tangled with Nade right on the edge of the box and he infuriated the travelling Jambos fans further when he allowed Ferguson's opener to stand despite a clear handball by the Rangers skipper.

Frontman Nade refused to point the finger at the man in the middle, however, and instead preferred to focus on the chances which he and his team-mates contrived to pass up in an entertaining first half.

Nade had several sights of goal in the opening 45 minutes while Andrius Velicka was unlucky to see an effort come back off the top of Allan McGregor's crossbar.

While he maintained that he should have been awarded a penalty the French striker stressed: "We were all upset at the time but I don't think that you can blame the referee, he has a job to do just like the rest of us and it is very hard for him too, especially in the conditions.

"All I know is that I didn't dive but I have not seen the incident on television so I couldn't say whether it was inside or outside the box, but I felt that I was brought down. We cannot focus on his decisions, we cannot blame him because at the end of the day it is down to us to win the game.

"Everyone was very disappointed with the result. I didn't think that we played that badly but we had chances to score in the first half and we didn't take them. If you don't score goals when the opportunities come along then you make it very hard for yourself.

"We played well in the first 45 minutes and I thought that we were on top but after the break we didn't link up so well and I think that everyone was a bit tired as the pitch was very heavy." While the majority of SPL clubs are involved in Scottish Cup matches on Saturday and Sunday, Hearts have a free weekend they could well have done without as a result of last week's 1-0 defeat in their fourth-round replay with Motherwell.

Nade admits that Hearts now face a huge task to salvage any pride from their SPL campaign so far, however he does believe that they are still capable of fighting back and claiming a place in European competition for next season.

Their next match is a week on Saturday against Gretna and Nade is hoping that the players will benefit mentally from their enforced rest this weekend.

"Now we must concentrate on the rest of the league season. We know that the cup competitions are both
gone now and obviously that is not good but if we can take any positives from it, we will have our attention fully on turning our league season around.

"We don't have a game this weekend and that can maybe be a good thing for us because we can all go away and think about everything that has happened over the last while.

"I think that we have a lot of good players at the club and that we can be up at the other end of the table because, although we are in a position that we do not want to be in, there are not that many points between ourselves and the teams in third or fourth place in the table.

"I think that we have to first of all look to get back into the top six of the table, that has to be our priority right now and after that we can start to look at earning a place in the top three and a place in Europe. We know that it is possible, we just have to prove that we can do it."

Taken from the Scotsman