U18s coach Scott Anderson was understandably very proud of his players after they produced another battling display to reach the semi-final of the SFA Youth Cup on Tuesday night after defeating St Johnstone 3-2.

“We give ourselves a mountain to climb.

“Early on we don’t deal with the ball forward well enough, and we put ourselves in a situation where Lewis unfortunately accidently clips his leg as the last man, so he’s got to go, which makes things really tough.

“We showed an enormous amount of character in the end to eventually come out on top in the game, so I’m absolutely delighted with that.

“We lose Brendan Hamilton to a second yellow card which I thought was extremely harsh, but we’ve got to be cleverer in these situations to make sure we don’t lose players for minor offences, so these boys will know miss out on the next cup game.

“I’m pleased with the resilience they’ve shown as a group, which is two rounds now where we’ve played 95 minutes with 10 men, so they dug deep and also then showed bits of quality.

“I don’t think our overall performance with the ball was where it’s been, but we are happy to see the boys character and get through on the basis of that.

“When we did get our shape and structure and found the right times for us to press high and the right times for us to stay within our shape they were organised, and people like Alfie Stewart and Findlay Marshall in the middle of the pitch showed good leadership qualities.

“We felt comfortable after we calmed ourselves down, I thought, we created some good opportunities and got the equaliser quite quickly and I felt good going into the second half.

“We struggled a little bit in the second half with pressing at the right time, and I know we can be better with the ball.

“Alfie Bavidge is out on loan and he is doing really well, and then he comes back down to play at his age group and his application has been very good, so he needs to keep going with that. His finish is first class. He was good throughout and the other two goals as well are really good finishes.

“We’ve got a number of players missing now for the semi-final, so we will just have to see who we get when the draw is made. We will find out and take it from there.”

Gallery 32 | St Johnstone v Aberdeen