Inverness Caley Thistle pay penalty against Ayr United in Championship and League One Cup amid injury concerns for Julia Scott and Iona MacArthur
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Inverness Caledonian Thistle's women are out of the Championship and League One Cup after a penalty shoot-out defeat at the hands of Ayr United.
A first-half double from Paige Henry had given the visitors a cushion going into half time at Millburn Academy, with Caley Thistle also losing Iona MacArthur and Julia Scott to injury in the opening 45 minutes.
However, they came roaring back at the start of the second period with Tina Kelly expertly finishing twice within five minutes of the restart to restore parity.
From there it was the Caley Jags who looked most likely to get a winner, with Ayr goalkeeper Charlotte Ferguson having to be at full stretch to tip Kirsty Deans' long-range effort on to the bar.
Extra time was needed in a bid to separate the sides, and when that did not work it went down to a penalty shoot-out to decide who would progress into the semi finals.
While Ayr scored all of their spot kicks, Deans and Hannah Gordon missed for ICT, sending the Highlanders out of the competition.
"It hurts, definitely, and especially after the second half performance," Inverness boss Karen Mason said.
"With that and how we played in extra time, we thought we were the better team overall, so to lose in a penalty shoot-out is tough. Credit to Ayr I guess for putting the ball in the back of the net.
"I said to the girls at the end that we've got to take heart from the second half performance in particular, but it doesn't make it any easier
"The way everyone is feeling right now, we didn't meet our objective that we set out to. We will try and take the positives from the game, but it might take a wee while for those to shine through."
There was concern when MacArthur and Scott were forced off, with the former being helped off the pitch after injuring her knee and the latter going to ground off the ball just before the interval.
Mason, though, is hopeful that neither will miss too much time – although further assessments will need to take place on MacArthur in particular.
"(Scott) was a chest problem that she was feeling before the game, so hopefully she'll be able to get over that pretty quickly," Mason reasoned.
"Iona is waiting to see a physio about her knee, but there's nothing ruptured from what I've heard so far. Hopefully it's not too bad.
"We lost Iona so early on, and she's one of our biggest threats. Losing her changed the way we played in the first half, and i think we lost a bit of confidence when she went off.
"Thankfully we pulled ourselves together for the second half and Tina Kelly came to life on the other side."
