Don Cowie rejects Ronan Hale fall guy claim after Ross County penalty miss in gut-wrenching Aberdeen loss

Gutted Don Cowie refused to lay the blame for Ross County’s defeat at penalty sinner Ronan Hale.

Dimitar Mitov made a brilliant save to deny the Staggies star and insult was added to injury when Aberdeen netted a 97th minute winner. County believes it was a case of Mitov being a hero than Hale the villain. Cowie stated: “I’ve seen it back, it's a fantastic save. Ronan's a really clean striker of the ball and I think he's hit a decent penalty to be fair. It's a fantastic save and another day he scores it.”

Cowie was pleased with his team’s reaction after losing six goals to Rangers last weekend and going out of the Premier Sports Cup to Spartans. He felt it was cruel his team had left with nothing. “I’m disappointed for the group,” the County boss added. “I thought it was a performance that was built on a real togetherness, really compact, limited Aberdeen to very few opportunities.

“Everything that I wanted from the group, to concede so late on is hard to take, but at the same time I'm really happy with what I've seen. It's raw right now, so naturally I've got a changing room.

"That's really disappointing because you see the effort that they put in to get to that point in the game. But over the coming days when we come back in after the group's had the day off, tomorrow, come Monday, we'll look at the positives as we always do.”

It was a day of double disappointment as VAR also chalked a Hale goal out. Cowie explained: "I have seen the disallowed goal back but at the time I didn't get too excited because I thought maybe Eamon had strayed slightly offside.

"Now I've seen it but I didn't realise how close it was. So that's disappointing."