Dutchman's Mind Games

Dorus de Vries saves the day. "You have no get inside their heads."

With a 100% at winning his two previous penalty shoot outs in Holland, Pars keeper Dorus de Vries played mind games with his Ayr opponents to give himself the opportunity to make important saves:-

"You have no get inside their heads. It is the only thing that you can do at penalty kicks; the pressure is on the penalty taker so it is all I can do as a goalkeeper. That is what I did and he wasn't focussed when he took the penalty - it was a bad penalty kick so I did my job."

Dorus certainly did his best to disrupt the spot kick awarded four minutes from the end of normal time. He collected a yellow card when objecting to Referee Craig Thomson's decision to penalise Souleymane Bamba for climbing up the back of Jerome Varielle adding "It does matter that I got a yellow card it was the right card."

Ayr United's Ryan Caddis sent the ball right, Dorus dived to his left to block the shot and his defence mopped up to allow the match to go into extra time. After another 15 minutes each way the tie was decided on penalties and the critical save was again made by De Vries from Ryan Caddis. It was the 17th penalty of the shoot out but Caddis went for the same side again, with the same result:-

"You are inside his mind because he has already missed one. You have to go for it because he is nervous and can break him down at that point.

"I was focussed on the game and trained hard for this game. We are both good competitors Roddy (McKenzie) and me - it is all I can do, train hard and play the matches that I get. I have to play them well, it is the only thing I can do.

"My main target is to make the Manager's task as difficult as possible. Everyday I give myself 110%, that is how I develop and that's how I can perform in the matches that I am given."