A day at Auchinleck Talbot as Scottish Cup magic casts a spell not even a Hearts hammering can break

Someone clearly took the “if they were playing in my back garden...” quip quite literally with Beechwood Park.

The village road that winds its way to the home of Auchinleck Talbot cuts through tight rows of terraced houses, more than enough to convince the uninitiated they’ve surely taken a wrong turn were it not for the steady stream of people, most of them draped in black and gold, marching faithfully upwards.

And it’s there, glimpsing the old ground at the crest of the hill, you realise the key difference to the old saying – you'll find nobody shutting the curtains here.

Not today; not when the epicentre of the Scottish Cup fourth round becomes this tiny corner of Ayrshire.

It awaits the arrival of Heart of Midlothian, third in the Premiership with ambitions of playing European football next season.

If it’s new horizons they seek, then this 4000 capacity time capsule – big enough to house the entire population of Auchinleck with room to spare - is about as far from a top-flight footballer’s comfort zone as it’s possible to imagine.

Tynecastle has cultivated a reputation for unnervingly close contact with the crowd but compared to here, where debutant right-back Nathaniel Atkinson will soon find himself as near to the house next door’s kitchen as he will to Alex Cochrane on the opposite flank, it’s a claustrophobe’s dream.

A 500 capacity stand recalls Gala Fairydean Rovers’ famous ‘brutalist’ Netherdale home, while it's cheek by jowel on the delightfully old-school terracing that covers the remaining three sides.

Sitting high above the village, you can at once see into the homes immediately opposite and for miles over the Ayrshire hills.

It feels only right the ground takes such pride of place, given how Talbot