Hampden here we come
Sunday, 24th Mar 2013Andy Ritchie strikes knock out blow on Saints but has no idea how to celebrate it
In 73rd minute of the SFA Youth Cup semi final, Andy Ritchie came off the Pars bench and he was to be the hero when he scored the crucial winning goal in the second last minute of extra time.
"Not for a second did I think that I could do that. I was just wanting to do my best when I came on and when that happened I just put as much effort into it as I could. It was just brilliant to score the winner.
"We needed a goal to win and I just pushed as much as I could, and got it. We thought that was it when Blair Henderson scored two minutes from the end of normal time but they just hit back.
"I couldn't believe it for a minute but we just had to dig in, start again and pretend that had never happened. "
With the clock running out it was going through more than Andy's mind that penalty kicks might be looming:-
"We were all thinking that and I would have been confident enough to take one but I was just so happy to get the goal. It came from Grant Munro running down the line, I was asking him for a cut back and it just bobbled over the line. The keeper saved it but it bounced over him."
The 18 year old from Perth has experience at various age groups at Aberdeen, Inverness and Dundee United but he has not played in a national final before. He thought before the game that they had a good chance of progressing:-
"We were really confident and I am really pleased to get through. I have no idea how we are going to celebrate this!"
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