ARDEER Thistle boss Sean Kenney held a strong sense of pride as his side came mightily close to causing a cup shock away to Arthurlie at the weekend.

Despite being two divisions below their opponents, Thistle took the Barrhead team all the way to penalties before they were eventually knocked out of the League Cup second round following a spot kicks loss.

However, Kenney felt the tie should never have reached that stage after his side were denied a "stonewall penalty" with the game's final kick - when the match was poised at 1-1.

Speaking to the club's own social media team after the match, Kenney aired his frustrations.

He said: “It’s a sore one, we are gutted in there but I’m really proud of the boys.

“We didn’t come up here just to be tourists and visit the place; we came up here with a plan that we put in the practice to try win the game.

“Getting beat on penalties is a sore one, it’s disappointing circumstances.

“I thought the ref had a really good game but he missed a blatant one [the penalty decision]. The handball for me is blatant. There is no way someone sees that clearly and doesn’t give it.

“I trust that we would have scored that one and we would be in the next round, the performance the boys put in deserved it.”

Kenney was still keen to focus on the positives of the performance against last season's Scottish Junior Cup finalists.

He added: “You’ve got to give credit to Arthurlie, they’re a very good team.

“We’ve come up here, after a good draw, we wanted to test ourselves against an historic club who are going well.

“I couldn’t be any prouder of the boys for what they put in today, I’m gutted for the boys because they deserved more.

“We gave our good account ourselves but ultimately we got beat so we need to look into that.

“There are things we should have done better and we need to improve on but there are loads of positives to take from today.”

Next up for Ardeer is a return to league action, when they travel to McKenna Park to face Glenvale on Saturday, October 12, with kick off at 2pm.