Paisley Pirates face one of their most exciting, and, at the same time, most difficult weekends of their season when they travel to Aberdeen this Sunday (face off 1.30pm) to face the home side in the semi final of the Scottish Cup, with a place in the final awaiting the winners of the one leg tie.

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“Yes, it’s another hard one for us,” said coach Ian Turley, “but we’ve really not had it any other way this year in the competition. We had to go to North Ayr for our first round tie, which we won, then had to go to the newly crowned league champions, Kirkcaldy Kestrels, where we put on one of our best performances of the season to record a great 4-1 win in Fife. Now we face another difficult tie against the Lynx, who beat us 5-4 in the corresponding league match, and it’s a one off, in that although it’s a semi final, it’s only over one leg, so we have to try and do it the hard way in front of a probable capacity crowd cheering on their own team.”

“We showed loads of determination and grit to come back from two goals down against the Dundee Tigers last weekend, and we have to do exactly the same this Sunday if we hope to progress to the final, hopefully without the two goal start we gave the Tigers then,” he went on. “We’ve certainly not had any favours from this competition this year, and if we DO get through against the Lynx, I don’t think anyone can possibly say we haven’t earned it. We’ll have to leave very early on the Sunday morning to get to Aberdeen in ample time to prepare at all for the match, so we feel a bit hard done by in terms of how everything has panned out this year in the cup. I’m just working on the principle that we seem to function best in times of adversity, so we’ll be going for it when we hit the ice on Sunday, don’t you worry!”