Date	Tuesday, 14 February 2006
Competition	Scottish Cup
Fixture/Score	Ross County 0:1 Falkirk
Venue	Victoria Park
Referee	Craig Thomson
Ross County
Manager	Gardner Spiers
Starting 11	1: Stuart Garden, 2: Neil McDonald, 3: James Lauchlan 1, 4: Sean Webb, 5: Lionel Djebi-Zadi, 6: Don (JNR) Cowie, 7: Kevin McKinlay, 8: Mark McCulloch, 9: John Rankin 1, 10: Sean Higgins 1, 11: Alexander Burke
Bench	0: Joseph Malin, 0: Fergus Tiernan, 0: David Winters, 0: Gary McSwegan, 0: Craig Gunn
Falkirk
Manager	John Hughes
Starting 11	Allan Ferguson, Kenny Milne, Tiago Jonas Rodrigues, Jack Ross, Patrick Cregg, Steven Thomson, Alan Gow 1, Liam Craig 1, Jean-Francois Lescinel 1, Pedro Moutinho 1, Daniel McBreen
Bench	Mark Howard, Andy Lawrie, Neil Scally, Vitor Lima, Mark Twaddle
Attendance	2,372
Match Report	Match Report Report by Paul Third for the Press & Journal. Ross County 0 Falkirk 1 Ross County caretaker manager Gardner Speirs was left to rue missed opportunities for his side as it missed out on its first quarter-final of the Scottish Cup in the club's 77-year history last night with a 1-0 defeat by Falkirk in a fourth-round replay at Victoria Park. Alan Gow scored the only goal of the game for the Bairns, who had goalkeeper Allan Ferguson to thank for their passage to the last eight, as he made several crucial first-half saves to deny Speirs' side a famous victory. Speirs said: "I thought in the first half we were excellent. We broke well with pace and quality in the wide areas and the Falkirk keeper made some clinical, I am sure I would be looking forward to the next round. "Credit to Falkirk, we made one mistake and they punished us, which tells you how difficult it is against a Premier League side. From their point of view, they will be delighted, but we feel we could have done better. "We haven't been in the last eight since the club was formed in 1929 and I guess the record will keep for another year. "We have Airdrie United in the league on Saturday and the big challenge for the players now is to bounce back from the disappointment of going out of the cup competition." Despite the defeat, Speirs, who has been in charge of team affairs on a caretaker basis since former manager John Robertson left the club five months ago, will be hoping the run in the competition will boost his hopes of being given the job on a permanent basis. Speirs has also steered County to second place in the First Division in what has become an unlikely bid for promotion in a turbulent season off the field at Victoria Park, where the club has been struggling financially. Talks about his own future will continue this week and he hopes for a positive outcome soon. He said: "My agent is coming up to the club on Thursday for talks and, as I have said already, I have been given assurances. Along with the coach at Real Madrid, we must be the longest serving care-taker managers in football, but I am sure we will get it sorted out. "We will speak later in the week and I want to get this cleared up once and for all." Falkirk's reward for beating County is a home tie against highflying Hibernian on Saturday, February 25, and Bairns manager John Hughes is happy just to have gone through.