Cap­tain Grant Har­ley scored a late win­ning try as Dun­dee Rugby secured an excel­lent Scot­tish Cup quarter-final win over Ayr on Sat­urday.

The cup this year has con­fused many in Scot­tish rugby circles because just six clubs from the Arnold Clark Premi­er­ship and National One have ended up tak­ing part.

That meant GHA and Heriot’s got byes to the semis, while Glas­gow Accies defeated High­land 49-28 in a quarter-final clash at the week­end.

Given that Ayr had a Premi­er­ship match on Sat­urday, they sent a devel­op­ment team to May­field to take on Dun­dee, but given the strength in depth the Mill­brae club have post-super6/series era this was a great win for the hosts who were releg­ated from National One a few weeks ago.

Ayr were lead­ing the enter­tain­ing clash 29-27 with time run­ning out, but home scrum-half Har­ley bagged a try and Dun­dee held on for the remain­ing 90 seconds to win 32-29 and pro­gress to the last four.

That was Har­ley’s second try, while Stu­art Kirk and James Mair also crossed, with Kirk con­vert­ing two of them and Har­ley one. Kirk also kicked two pen­al­ties.

Rob Stur­gess was named player of the match.

Har­ley said: “Going into the game the oppos­i­tion were some­what of an unknown entity for us, so we were very much focused on our own per­form­ance.

“The goal was to go out, express ourselves and have no regrets at the final whistle.

“We were dan­ger­ous with ball in hand throughout as our for­wards gave us a good plat­form with strong car­ry­ing, which allowed our backs to attack the wide chan­nels.

“As the game went on it was clear it was going to be a tight fin­ish, but we were able to man­age the game well and get into pos­i­tion to take the lead.

“This was then fol­lowed by a tense 90 seconds or so to see out the game when the efforts of the whole team to keep pos­ses­sion and run down the clock was fant­astic.

“We will now begin pre­par­ing for a semi-final and we are rel­ish­ing the oppor­tun­ity to keep our sea­son going and know that, if we sharpen up in a few areas, we will be in a good pos­i­tion head­ing into that game.”

Dun­dee head coach Alan Clark said: “We played some really good rugby after what’s been a really tough sea­son and credit to a young Ayr team that stayed in the fight until the end too.

“I’m really proud of what the boys have done since our last league game in terms of keep­ing improv­ing at train­ing and main­tain­ing their com­mit­ment levels.

“The guys were buzz­ing after the game and we are all look­ing for­ward to whatever a semi-final has to throw up.”