St Johnstone manager Simo Valakari hopes scoring a late Scottish Cup winner takes the weight off Adama Sidibeh’s shoulders.
The striker netted in the 87th minute to secure a 1-0 victory over Championship strugglers Hamilton at McDiarmid Park and book a spot in Monday night’s quarter-final draw.
It was Sidibeh’s first goal since he struck twice in victory at Kilmarnock in August when Craig Levein was manager.
The Gambian has often cut a frustrated figure through his six-month barren spell and Valakari felt Sidibeh suffered from over-thinking too many opportunities.
However, it was pure penalty-box instinct against Accies as Sidibeh threw his head at a Graham Carey shot to divert past Dean Lyness.
Valakari said: “It was a very good striker’s goal. That’s Adama. He plays with his instincts.
“In this moment, he didn’t have time to think. He’s a good striker. But when you’re not scoring goals, you think about it too much.
“That means your actions become slower and you become too safe. In this moment he just played with his instincts and we saw the end result.
“I’m very, very pleased for him. We all know the life of a striker – from one moment like that, everything can change.
“Now he has to be positive, play to his strengths and let things flow. Just go and play.”
Valakari was pleased to note the patience from his side while Hamilton held firm.
He added: “Credit to our opponent. They came with a good gameplan, they were solid.
“But I have to give big credit to my players for how they handled this situation.
“We played very comfortably under difficult circumstances. We knew that, if we made one mistake, the opponent could score and we were out.
“But we didn’t think about that. We were only thinking about how we could score.
“We didn’t rush things. The boys stuck to what we wanted them to do and we had belief that the goal would come.”
Hamilton boss John Rankin pointed to his team’s performance as evidence that he is still getting a tune out of his relegation-threatened side.
Angry Accies fans displayed a banner calling for Rankin to go and protested against the departure of captain Scott Martin to Partick Thistle.
Rankin said: “I think the chants were even before the game started. Listen, it’s not hard for me. I’m big enough and strong enough.
“If my players weren’t giving me everything, I would question myself.
“But I look at the work they’re putting in. Our structure was good, we defended well.
“We knew Graham Carey has quality but when he hits a shot and it gets deflected in, it’s a sore one.
“We were organised all afternoon and it was probably going to take something like that to break us down.”
