Eva: The most important thing was the result
22 June 2023Hearts struggled to impose their game plan on the Tangerines in the early stages, but by the half hour mark it did seem like the opening goal was only a matter of time.
It took the girls until the second half to find the opener and it was a moment of magic from Ciara Grant, who curled an exquisite free kick right into the top corner from 20-yards.
Jenna Penman grabbed her first goal for the club just moments later as Hearts took full control of the cup tie.
There should have been more goals by full time, but Hearts had to settle for a comfortable 2-0 victory and the manager is just happy to be in the hat for Monday’s 5th round draw.
“The plan was of course to get through to the next round,” she said. “The Scottish Cup is a nice competition and we managed to get to the semi-final last year. It didn’t matter how we won today; the most important thing was making sure we got that win.
“The first 20 minutes is forgotten, and I said to the girls at half time, ‘we have to do better’. We weren’t creating enough, and we are a team that likes to create and have a lot of possession. The second half we had a lot of opportunities, but we must keep improving in the final third because we still miss a lot of chances, and we can’t afford to keep missing so much.”
Olid made a few changes for the trip to Gussie Park and was pleased with the performances of the girls brought into the starting line-up.
“It was a good game to do rotation,” she added. “Sometimes it is hard to make changes when you are only wining by a goal, and you don’t want to change too much. But today was a good opportunity to give some players a chance who haven’t played that many minutes and those players did well and that is positive for the team going forward.”