Hearts defeat was hard, but Ayr United are our target now, says Airdrie ace

Dean McMaster says Airdrie will put their Scottish Cup defeat against Hearts behind them and focus on earning a Premiership play-off slot.

Fifth-placed Diamonds host an Ayr United side sitting two places and as many points behind them in the Championship table, but with the Diamonds having two games in hand.

Rhys McCabe’s side are also four points off Morton in fourth and are looking to make up some ground before travelling to Cappielow in a fortnight.

Ex-St Mirren kid McMaster, 20, played in the 4-1 fifth round defeat at home to Hearts on Sunday but says they’ll move on.

The midfielder said: “We’ve got some good fixtures to look forward to and we’re not going to dwell on it too much.

“Hearts are a great side, but we’re just going to look at the games we have coming up.

“We’ll work on Ayr at home and see where we can go from there.

“They’ve had Scott Brown coming in as boss, and have had a couple of decent results.

“I heard they played not bad against Rangers at Ibrox on Saturday as well, so we just need to build on our performance, look forward to it,. and try to get the result.

“The main goal is the play-offs and the SPFL Trust Trophy final against TNS in March, so getting as many points as we can get in the coming weeks would be great.”

McMaster says Hearts were a level above anybody else Airdrie have faced this season and said there was only so much they could do.

He said: “It was a tough game, playing against a better opposition side, which is something we’re not used, to and it was evident.

“I thought in glimpses of the game we showed some good quality and good things going forward, so we just need to learn from it.

“We’ll look ahead to our fixtures now and take that into the games.

“At the start of the game we had