ARTHURLIE manager Frank Lynch praised his players for shooting bitter rivals Pollok out of the Scottish Cup and ramming their critics' words down their throats.
A draw at full-time in Saturday's first round replay took the match straight to penalties with the Barrhead men holding their nerve to record a 3-1 win.
Lynch said: "Over the past seven days we've had to take a huge amount of stick from various people so I'm delighted to have shut them up.
"We know we should have beaten Pollok last week when they were down to nine men and we were disappointed more than anyone else that we didn't.
"In my opinion the better team went through as we were the ones who really went for it.
"I'm not having a pop at Pollok but I've never known them to play with only one up front so that just shows they were running scared of us.
"We won't kid anyone on by saying we played well because that wasn't the case. But the important thing in cup games is to go through to the next round.
"When it went to a shoot-out I was really confident because we have guys who can stick penalties away plus we've got Kris Robertson who can keep them out."
Stevie Jack put Lie in front when his free-kick took a big deflection off the defensive wall past keeper Ian Wilson and into the top corner.
On the hour mark a long ball from Lok skipper Stevie Aitchieson cleared the home defence and striker Gavin Friels nipped in to coolly slot home.
In the closing stages, with the visitors on top, they suffered a setback when Aitchieson was sent off.
It was left to hero Robertson to produce two stunning saves in the shoot-out to delight the home fans in the Dunterlie Park crowd.
Pollok boss Rab Sneddon said:"I thought we were the better side in both games but the reality is we haven't done enough.
"To go out in the first round is especially hard because this club is usually challenging at the latter stages of this competition but I'm confident we can bounce because we've got too good a side not to.