Dundee defender Lee Ashcroft admits getting away with a big first-half error was almost as much a relief as his winner against Motherwell.
The centre-back grabbed the goal that saw the Dark Blues into the last eight of the Premier Sports Cup following their “dominant” 1-0 home win over the Steelmen.
But it might have been a different story had Connor Shields made the most of a gilt-edged chance in the opening period.
Ashcroft was caught in two minds on halfway and allowed Steven Lawless to pinch the ball before racing away and setting up Shields.
With only goalkeeper Adam Legzdins to beat, the former Queen of the South man rattled his shot off the crossbar, leaving Ashcroft a thankful man.
“It’s a feeling you can’t explain, to be honest,” Ashcroft said.
“You are running back but you feel as though you aren’t moving.
“You are just thinking ‘miss, miss, miss’. Nine times out of ten they go in – you either need big Adam to get you out of jail or the boy to miss the chance.
“Afterwards you are just looking to the sky thinking, ‘I got away with it’, and after that it’s just a case of making sure it doesn’t happen again.
“If they score that, they go in 1-0 up at half-time and it’s hard to get back into the game.
“But we got away with it and I think in the second half we were dominant to be honest.
“We really took the game to them, we had a lot of corners, a lot of chances and it was good to get the goal in the end.”
Corner after corner
Ashcroft played a key role in Dundee’s promotion success last season, finding the net seven times in all competitions, including the goal that ultimately sent the club up.
That earned him the Players’ Player of the Year and Fans’ Player of the Year awards at Dens Park.
And he’s delighted to add goal No 8 of the calendar year in the new campaign as the Dark Blues maintain their sizeable threat from set-pieces.
Ashcroft’s goal came from Dundee’s 15th corner of the match against ’Well and they finished with 17 in total.
“I think the manager would have been going off his head at us after the game if we hadn’t scored so it was nice to get on the end of one of them eventually,” he added.
“I thought in the second half we were dominant.
“Apart from the chance in the first half, I felt we were solid.
“It was just one of those that, while we were dominant after the break, you wonder ‘Is it going to come?’
“So it was good to get the head on the corner and get the goal.
“Once we got that goal, I felt we were pretty comfortable.”
Bounced back
That comfortable feeling was all the more impressive as it came just six days after a hugely uncomfortable day at Celtic Park.
The 6-0 thumping dished out by the Hoops was Dundee’s biggest defeat in over four years.
What defines a team, though, isn’t often those stand-alone results but rather how they respond to them.
And a win and a clean sheet against Premiership opponents shows the kind of mentality the Dark Blues have built at Dens Park insists Ashcroft.
He added: “It’s always difficult after a result like that (against Celtic).
“It was the same last year when we had a couple of poor results and we managed to bounce back pretty quickly.
“Listen, I’ve been there before and it’s easy to go on a slump and go through a couple of games where it’s hard and it’s horrible.
“But I don’t think it affected us.
“You just have to get on with it and deal with it.
“But listen, we’re delighted to keep a clean sheet after last week.
“We went there and it was a struggle but that’s behind us now.
“Saturday was a tough game after that, but we’re 1-0 winners and we’d have bitten your hand off for that before the game.
“We’re delighted.”