Pope's hopes dashed in heartbeat
Nick Rodger

IN the brief seconds that it took for Gordon Pope to slide a tidy finish into the Hearts net, wheel away to celebrate and forlornly discover that his injury-time effort had been ruled out for offside, an awful lot went through the Auchinleck Talbot defender's mind.

"I was thinking of the replay at Rugby Park and the possibility of Sky Sports and all the publicity," confessed Pope in the aftermath of a captivating contest. "It would have been a huge game but I just turned round and saw the flag and my heart sank."

A further 3000-odd hearts sank too in the away end as the Clydesdale Bank Premier League side held on grimly for a face-saving triumph that was secured only through Gordon Smith's fortuitous 84th-minute strike, after the ball had dribbled free from a collision between Andy Leishman, the visiting keeper, and team-mate Bryan Slavin.

Auchinleck, one of the giants of the junior game and nine-time winners of the Scottish Junior Cup, arrived in Edinburgh aiming for a giant killing of their own and came within a whisker of achieving an astonishing result. As the clock ticked down and Hearts' efforts to break the dogged resistance grew ever more desperate, the tension became too much for one punter. Squirming in his seat like a haemorrhoids sufferer squatting on a rather large pine cone, any sympathy for the recent financial woes of the Hearts players soon gave way to all-out anguish. Amid the expletives of the throaty wail, the point was clear. "People have to earn their wages," was the conclusion to the tirade. Goodness knows what he would have roared had Pope's last-gasp effort stood. Deep into injury time – some eight minutes had been added after a long delay caused by a serious head injury to Hearts' Darren Barr – the 22-year-old nipped in behind the home rearguard and finished with aplomb but the flag had already been raised. It was an incredibly tight call.

"I felt I was onside and I heard on the radio afterwards that I was," added Pope, who was on the books with Dundee United for a spell. "The ball was played out and I've been in line with Andy Webster. The ball came back over. I think I definitely timed it and put it in the back of the net. It was a bit of composure in the 95th minute."

That incident was the final act of a match that had captured the imaginations in the days leading up to it. No one could have imagined how close the actual result would be, however. This was the SPL against the junior league after all. Paulo Sergio, the Hearts manager, rang the changes and made eight alterations to the side that had dismantled Hibernian in the Edinburgh derby earlier in the week. Fraser Mullen was one of the new faces in an experimental line-up but the 18-year-old's dream debut turned into something of a disaster when his early penalty was superbly saved by Leishman. The Talbot keeper was inspired throughout and a series of magnificent blocks provided the bedrock upon which Auchinleck built a rousing performance.

Had Hearts scored with that early opportunity then it could have been so very different but Auchinleck grew in stature, they were well-marshalled and were unrelenting in their tireless harrying of their hosts.

"That was the plan," said Pope, whose eventful day included the foul on Arvydas Novikovas which led to the penalty. "If we could hold it to half-time they would just get more and more frustrated and the fans would get on their backs, which we wanted. It was just unlucky that one error has cost us a goal."

For Pope, and the rest of the Auchinleck heroes, it will be back to normal duties this weekend but the former Scotland under-19 cap believes Saturday's result shows there are rich pickings to be had in the junior ranks. "Everyone is just proud of what they put in out there," he said. "There's a few players that could definitely step up [to the SPL] in our team and in other junior teams too. There's not much of a gap."

That gap was almost bridged in extraordinary fashion on Saturday.

Taken from the Herald