SAUCHIE boss Fraser Duncan blasted Glenafton Athletic’s pitch after his side’s Scottish Cup run was finally brought to an end against the West Superleague leaders.

The surface at Loch Park passed an early inspection, but Duncan was sceptical over whether the surface was playable after a match which descended into a battle as players on both sides struggled to keep their feet.

But even though the manager admitted that his team didn’t play to their full potential, he spoke of his pride in their run to the last eight of the competition.

Duncan told Advertiser Sport: “It’s hard to pick the boys up after a result like that but there were a lot of things that went against us and I have told them that.

"The park was bordering on unplayable – if you can’t keep your feet on a surface you shouldn’t be playing on it and boys were sliding all over the place.

"We’ve had games off in the past when our pitch has been better than that. To be honest, to have done so well to get to this stage of the cup and then have to come and play on that is pretty poor. When you get to the quarter-final you expect the surface to be better than that.

“We want to get the ball down and play and we just weren’t able to do that. It turned into a bit of a battle and to be fair to Glenafton, they battled well. That might be what gets them through the semi final.

“I am very proud. The lads have worked so hard to get to this stage but we just didn’t have that cutting edge that has got us through up to this point. You can blame the conditions all you like but at the end of the day, we didn’t do the things we are good at and that’s what killed us.”

Duncan also criticised the referee’s performance after seeing his side denied a clear penalty, before losing the instrumental Andy Shirra to a controversial late red card.

He said: “A lot of refereeing decisions went Glenafton’s way but neither of those things lost us the game in the end. We didn’t have enough of a cutting edge and we didn’t do enough of the things we are good at. We didn’t get the ball into wide areas. We couldn’t get the ball down and play.

“The referee said Andy went over the ball but I could clearly see that he won the ball and everyone else will see that on the highlights. That was one of a few calls that went against us.

"I do feel like at times, the referee was favouring them and to be honest that’s not good enough.”

Despite his obvious disappointment at the result, Duncan urged his players to make up for it by ensuring they now go on to win the Premier League title.

He added: “It will take a few days to get over this because it has taken a huge effort to get us this far but we have to recover quickly. We will be back training hard again this week because we have got a league title to win, and we need to make sure we do that.”

Duncan also took the time to pass on his condolences to the family of goalkeeper Conor Brown, who passed away this month.

Brown had been involved with Sauchie’s community setup, turning out for local side Tullibody Amateurs.

Duncan added: "I wore a black armband for Conor on Saturday as I wanted to express my sympathy and the club's to his family. He was a great kid and will be sadly missed.

"It puts football and the disappointment of the result into perspective."