Midfielder Ethan Ross marks new loan deal by scoring first goal for Falkirk in Scottish Cup third-round tie
Ethan Ross couldn’t have picked a better way to mark the extension of his loan stay with the Bairns, announced earlier in the day, than by scoring his first goal for the club, however.
The Inverurie-born midfielder got Falkirk off the mark against the fifth-tier Aberdeenshire outfit on 34 minutes and the 22-year-old’s opener, a left-footed volley from the edge of the box following a headed clearance from a corner, was followed by two further goals in the space of five minutes, securing a third-round victory against Scottish Highland Football League opposition for the second year on the trot 12 months on from a 6-0 win away to Wick Academy.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdNext on the scoresheet was winger Calvin Miller with a far-post header from a Callumn Morrison cross from the right on 37 minutes.
That was followed two minutes later by a scuffed shot from striker Ross MacIver, following a Miller cross from the left, that managed to sneak past visiting goalkeeper Ewen Macdonald just inside his right-hand post.
Those three first-half goals concluded the scoring at the Falkirk Stadium for the afternoon but they were enough to ensure it was the hosts’ name and not that of their visitors from Pitmedden among the 32 going into the hat for the following evening’s fourth-round draw as they look to follow up the cup run that took them all the way to the last four earlier this year.
Ross, originally due to return to parent club Raith Rovers in January but now remaining at Falkirk until the end of the current Scottish League One season, was chuffed to bits to get his first goal for the Bairns, taking his career total to nine, telling Falkirk TV: “I was at the edge of the box for the corner and then the ball just looped up in the air and I saw it coming down and I thought ‘right, I’m going to connect with this as well as I can with my weak foot’.
“As soon as I hit it, I knew it was going near and I saw it go into the top corner, so I was delighted.”