Written by Marko Srsen
Caley Thistle were knocked out in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup on Tuesday night by Queen’s Park.
Goals from Dominic Thomas and substitute Scott Williamson helped defeat Caley Thistle in front of their home support and take Queen’s Park to the next round.
Despite losing top-scorer Simon Murray to Ross County on deadline day, Queen’s Park still managed to break through the Inverness defence and beat Mark Ridgers twice – also keeping a clean sheet.
Both sides made 3 changes each from their previous Championship matches – Inverness previously drawing 2-2 with Raith Rovers, and Queen’s Park defeated 3-0 by Dundee.
Cameron Harper returned to the starting XI after making his 100th appearance for the club at Raith on Saturday. Scott Allardice would also return, replacing Lewis Hyde. Nathan Shaw would replace Daniel Mackay on the left of the midfield.
Caley would have the better chances to break the deadlock in the first half. Jay Henderson – who has impressed since signing on loan from Premiership side St Mirren, hitting the post in the 18th minute for the best chance of the half.
Both sides would continue to test each other’s goalkeepers throughout the half, however, both Ridgers and Ferrie remained strong to be able to keep it at 0-0 going into half-time.
Caley stopper Ridgers would take his good form into the second half. Queen’s Parks Euan Henderson would show his physical prowess against Danny Devine to find himself one-on-one with Ridgers, but Ridgers would come out on top – making himself big to make a huge save with his leg 10 minutes into the half.
Ridgers however would finally be beaten in the 74th minute. The deadlock would be broken by Dominic Thomas, after Inverness would fail to successfully play out from the back, the ball would fall to Thomas on the edge of the box, taking the ball onto his left foot and finding the back on the net.
Despite pressure from Caley to find an equaliser, the away side would make it 2-0 just 10 minutes after the first goal. This time substitute Scott Williamson, who showed great awareness and patience in the box to pounce onto the ball after a mistake by Danny Devine in the Caley box, finding the bottom right corner.
Head Coach Billy Dodds said: “I’m really disappointed going out of course. We showed them too much respect to start with in the first twenty minutes. Once we got into the game and did the right things in the right areas we created a few opportunities.”
“They, as expected, had loads of possession and they had a couple of chances but so did we. We had real good chances at the right times. We’ve hit the post, Aaron is through one-on-one and then stumbles and we’ve had other efforts. Billy Mckay had made their goalkeeper pull off a really good save but we’re out of the cup because we’ve made two bad mistakes.”
“Sometimes we’re getting mixed up in terms of the balance of when to play in the right areas, when to play in the wrong areas and we played in the wrong areas tonight at times and we paid the ultimate penalty and we handed them two goals. There’s nothing you can do about that, you have to take it on the chin and we look forward to the rest of the season.”