Keanu Baccus is adamant St Mirren won’t dwell on their Scottish Cup exit at the hands of Celtic.
That’s because the Australia international and his Buddies are fully focused on keeping their Premiership top-six challenge on track this week.
The Saints put up a strong resistance in Glasgow on Saturday evening before the dam burst when Richard Taylor was sent off deep into the second half.
Despite their chance of cup glory going up in smoke at Parkhead, Baccus is determined to help the Paisley club stay in the top half of the table come the split.
And with games this week against managerless Motherwell on Wednesday night before the visit of relegation-battling Ross County on Saturday, the talented midfielder believes there’s no time like the present to get a run of victories started.
Baccus said: “I think we did compete well with Celtic. We obviously learned a hard lesson the last time we were there and we tried to do things a little bit better. I think we did that for 60 or 70 minutes.
“Then obviously we got a hard break. I thought Richard Taylor was excellent until he got the red. That is football though. Those things change the games.
“We had a plan in the home game in the league and it obviously came off and we beat them there. We tried to stick to that as much as possible because we beat them before and you believe more when you have.
“But they are obviously quality players and they bring quality players off the bench so credit to them. The bench players scored four goals.
“It was obviously tough to get drawn against Celtic in the cup, but we move on, it’s over, we can’t do anything about it.
“We move on to the league. We are doing well, but we need to keep going and do that run we did at the start of the season or even not long ago. The Hibs loss wasn’t great, but we are going to play like we did against Celtic and do as well as we can.
“We are getting to the levels that we were when we were winning games in a row back in the league. That is what we have got to do in the league now, win a few games on the spin. We will be ready for all of them.”
Baccus felt his World Cup experience of taking on eventual champions Argentina in Qatar helped him deal with competing in front of a massive Celtic crowd on Saturday.
And he believes his Buddies created chances to spring an upset but just couldn’t find a final telling pass or shot to trouble Joe Hart.
Baccus said: “It is good to get that experience of playing in big stadiums and in front of a lot of fans – just like we did on Saturday. It makes it a little bit easier when you go out into a stadium like Parkhead and hear the noise.
“I am older and more experienced now. I definitely want to continue that good form.
“It is tough there obviously, but on the break we had chances and we didn’t get that final shot off or the final pass to get a shot off. That is something we need to work on more.
“Maybe it is down to a bit of luck in games as well. We had a couple of headers which could have gone somewhere. Grievo’s chance was a great chance. The defender there has done amazing. There are little things in the game we know we can do better.”
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