Raith Rovers hero Christian Nade says his side were not in the least surprised by their historic Scottish Cup success over Rangers.
The Kirkcaldy club recorded their first win at Ibrox for almost 56 years, harking back to the days where the legendary Jim Baxter played in Rovers’ white and blue, and Nade was the man on hand to net the decisive goal in a 2-1 triumph.
Yet the big Frenchman stressed afterwards that everybody in the visiting dressing room had faith prior to the game that they could deny the Glasgow giants a place in the quarter-finals.
“It feels good, it feels really, really good,” he said.
“We came here to win and that’s what we did.
“It’s probably a shock for everyone else, but not for us because we knew we had a chance.
“After their defeat against Celtic, we knew they were not at their best confidence-wise, so we wanted to come here and take our chance.
“Every game is different.
“We lost 6-1 the last time we played at Ibrox but I don’t think it was deserved, so we came here to try and be focused.
“We had the belief that we could score again after it went to 1-1, and we just needed to create chances that’s what we did.
“In the last 20 minutes you could see that Rangers were not confident and were shouting at each other, so we knew then that they couldn’t come back.”
Nade revealed he knew when he was substituted late in the second half that Rovers had Rangers where they wanted them, although his confidence was tempered slightly by goalkeeping coach Wayne Henderson.
He added: “When I was coming off the pitch I asked the people on the bench: ‘When was the last time Raith Rovers won at Ibrox?’
“And Wayne told me: ‘It’s not finished yet! Shut up!’
“But I knew then that we could do something here.
“We all knew and we’re not surprised.
“It doesn’t matter who we get in the next round I don’t even watch much football so I don’t even know who’s left in.”
Rovers ran out 2-1 winners after Haris Vuckic had cancelled out Ryan Conroy’s free-kick opener, and former Dundee winger Conroy is looking forward to today’s quarter-final draw.
“The boys will be looking at the TV quite eagerly, and hopefully we’ll get a home draw,” he stressed.
“I’m not sure what other teams are left in it but I don’t think we’ve got anybody to fear.
“The boys are delighted and there was a lot of hard work put into that game.
“I think you could see at the end that a few of us were out on our feet.
“We thought coming here that we had a good chance of winning and we’re delighted it came off.
“We put a lot into the game, we worked on it during the week about what we were going to do and our plan came to fruition quite well.
“When everything comes together we are a hard team to play against.
“We had played them twice earlier in the season and we knew we didn’t do ourselves justice, but coming here I think we had belief because we’ve been on a good run and we haven’t been beaten in six games now.
“I think you could see that on the pitch and it worked.
“It might be considered a cup shock because Rangers are obviously a bigger team than Raith Rovers, but we know we’re a great team.
“You can see it in the league in the last few games and although we maybe should be a bit higher than where we are, we’re on a great run.
“The crowd maybe wasn’t as big as it normally is but at the end of the day it’s still Rangers you are playing against.
“We maybe got them at a good time, but we came here, played really well, stuck to our job and got the win.”