Tight offside call denies brave Auchinleck a replay

Published on Monday 9 January 2012 03:10

WHEN the ball came his way in the fifth minute of stoppage time on Saturday, Gordon Pope held his line in an effort to stay onside, collected possession just inside the penalty area and calmly slotted it past the goalkeeper, at which point a succession of thoughts flashed through his mind.

“The replay,” was his first. “Rugby Park,” was his second. “We were told Sky Sports possibly as well,” he adds, breathless at the very notion. “More publicity for the club. It would have been a huge game.”

Would have been. Could have been. Should have been, according to those who have pored over the television replays. No sooner had Pope wheeled away to celebrate what he thought was a thrilling late equaliser against Hearts at Tynecastle than the assistant referee was waving his flag for offside. “I just turned round and saw it. My heart sank. I felt it was onside. I think I timed it, definitely.”

And so, Andre Villas-Boas will not be plucking Auchinleck Talbot’s name from the hat in today’s draw for the fifth round of the William Hill Scottish Cup, but boy was it a close thing. Only Gordon Smith’s winner in the 84th minute, after a rare misunderstanding between the Auchinleck goalkeeper and his defence, spared Hearts the ignominy.

Paulo Sergio, their manager, said later that an early goal would have led to a completely different match, which was true. He said that, had two SPL sides contested the same exchange, Hearts would have been congratulated for a deserved win, which was another fair point. They had most of the possession, created a handful of decent chances, including a missed penalty, and on another day, might have won by four or five.

But there was no early goal. And these were not two SPL sides. The visitors, remember, were not even a team from the lower divisions. They were Auchinleck Talbot, of the Stagecoach Super League, who qualified for the Scottish Cup by winning its junior equivalent. That is an achievement they have pulled off three times in the last five years, but for Pope, what they did at Tynecastle was equally satisfying. “I mean, 1-0 at Hearts ... they’re the third-biggest team in Scotland. Against a junior team? Everybody was saying it was going to be this, that and the other amount of goals, but it didn’t happen.”

That it didn’t was thanks partly to the defensive discipline they maintained throughout, but mainly to the heroics of their goalkeeper, Andy Leishman, whose penalty save, from Fraser Mullen in the 20th minute, was just one of several outstanding blocks. It was Hearts’ fourth successive failure from the spot after misses by Eggert Jonsson, Jamie Hamill and Ian Black.

Leishman pulled off two more blinding saves, both from Rudi Skacel, but as the clock ticked down, his luck ran out. When Jordan Morton flung a high ball into the box, the goalkeeper’s attempt to collect resulted only in a collision with Bryan Slavin, a team-mate. The pair of them fell to the floor, and the ball broke to Smith, who quickly found the empty net.

It was a painful way to go behind, after so much hard work, so much success in frustrating Hearts, who had grown more afraid as the game wore on. “That was the plan,” said Pope. “If we could hold it to half-time, they would just get more and more frustrated and the fans would get on their backs. We were just unlucky that one error cost us a goal.”

It let Sergio off the hook after his decision to field an inexperienced side. Smith’s goal came in his first match since returning from a loan spell with Hamilton Academical. Morton, just back from Cowdenbeath, was making his Hearts debut, as was Mullen, the man of the match, according to his manager. Jamie MacDonald played in goal and there were rare starts for Arvydas Novikovas (replaced at half-time) and Darren Barr, whose lengthy treatment for a head knock in the second half led to eight minutes of time added on.

All in all, Hearts will be as keen to forget this one as Auchinleck will be to remember it. Tommy Sloan, their manager, said later that he had men who would turn down offers from clubs in the second and third divisions in order to play at a higher level still. Their fans would be no more out of place in the league’s upper reaches. “They were brilliant,” said Pope. “To bring maybe two thousand from a village of three and half ... it’s superb.”

Taken from the Scotsman