ROSSVALE Juniors boss Martin Lauchlan is convinced officials took the right decision to call off Saturday's ETHXenergy Scottish Cup tie against Stonehaven 90 minutes before kick-off.

At noon the Bishopbriggs-based team's 3G artificial playing surface at New Petershill Park was in perfect nick.

And it looked like the fourth-round tie against the North Region league leaders, who had set off with carloads of supporters in tow, would go ahead.

But their hopes were dashed when a fall of snow less than two hours before kick-off time carpeted the pitch in white.

And Glasgow District Council, the owners of the Springburn complex, immediately declared the pitch unplayable on health and safety grounds.

Locky said: "There was absolutely no danger of the game not going ahead around noon, but the snow changed everything.

"And I knew our game was certain to be postponed when I saw council officials forcing Petershill’s players to abandon a training session out on the pitch.

“It’s a hard one to accept when everyone is raring to go but rules are rules.”

Locky’s outlook, however, was not shared by all among his eager young Rossvale playing squad and certainly not by livewire front man Jay Mackay.

He returned from an impromptu inspection of the playing surface to scathingly declare: "It’s not even slippy out there and I don’t see why we can’t just get an orange ball out and play the game."

The weather and overnight frost on Friday brought about the postponements of all but two West Region fixtures as well as many further afield.

And Renfrew’s players were probably wishing their last-32 clash away to Kelty Hearts had also fallen foul of the wintry weather after ending up on the wrong end of an 8-0 thrashing that left co-boss Colin Clark seething afterwards.

He said: "Good Luck to Kelty Hearts who are a physically strong side and potential cup winners.

"But we didn’t help ourselves by giving arguably our poorest performance of the season and if truth be told, they didn’t really need to get out of second gear.

“We criminally gave the ball away too easily, lost goals at set-plays through schoolboy errors and generally didn’t do ourselves justice so the final whistle came as a bit of a relief.”

One time Blackpool midfielder Stephen Husband and Calum Smith bagged hat tricks to go along with Scott Dalziel and Stuart Cargill counters for the rampant East Region champions whose free-scoring display had Frew striker Chris Zok endorsing co-manager Clarky’s comments.

He said: “We travelled up there feeling more than capable of giving Kelty a run for their money.

“But we paid the price for giving their players too much respect and standing off them, particularly in midfield where Husband was the standout player.

“His pulled the strings and his performance, along with the good movement of their frontmen, made it appear like a training work out for them at times and we just never exerted enough pressure on the ball to give ourselves a chance.

“We’ve let ourselves and a lot of other people down so our next game cannot come soon enough.”

Kelty are joined in the last 16 by Bonnyrigg Rose for whom Wayne McIntosh and Ross Archibald were on target in the only other Scottish Cup tie to take place.

Closer to home, a major upset awaited Super First Division frontrunners Largs Thistle who yielded up their unbeaten league record after succumbing to a 1-0 defeat at home to bottom markers Maybole for whom Andy Stevenston was on the mark.

And at Hamilton Park, a hat-trick from veteran campaigner Paul Cameron added to a David Cunningham score saw promotion hopefuls Girvan run out 4-0 winners over Annbank United in the Ayrshire District Division.