FOR one night only perhaps, the Railway Hotel, Auchinleck, was staking a claim last night to be Scotland’s No 1 night out on TripAdvisor. Win, lose or draw in yesterday’s William Hill Scottish Cup fourth round tie against championship high flyers Ayr United, Auchinleck Talbot’s players had a little pub crawl planned through this ex-mining village and that was the end of the line.

In retrospect it was a good thing everyone had done some forward planning. Because the biggest day in the history of this famous wee club, the village and perhaps the history of junior football unfolded in a manner everyone at the club can scarcely have dreamed of.

Not only were this band of heroes well-nigh carried in shoulder high when they made their way back from the dressing rooms into the social club, the likelihood of them being able to get all the way round without having to put their hands in their pocket were boosted by the fact that pretty much the entire village had backed them, some of them presumably with the cup sponsors, at odds of anything up to 18-1. The club were left ruing their luck in 2012 when a late equaliser against Hearts was wrongly disallowed but this one more than made up for that.

As afternoons go, this was as magical as any moment in the history age-old cup, a tie which more than lived up to its billing and justified BBC Scotland’s decision to screen it live. It somehow said it all that the winning goal, in the 78th minute, should be scored by Craig McCracken, a former Ayr United player, from a free-kick delivered by Mark Shankland, another former Ayr United player.

In all, there were five members of this Auchinleck team who once played for Ayr, or six if you include manager Tommy Sloan. “Look certainly in in my time that is our biggest win, it’s a great scalp,” he said afterwards. “Ayr went to Tannadice and won 5-0 the other week there. Who do we want now? Somebody we can hopefully match and try to get a result against. I am not into the Old Firm and all that, it’s only the committee who want that.”

Shankland, whose prolific namesake Lawrence was unavailable for Ian McCall’s side after aggravating an Achilles issue in training, marked his contribution by cupping his ear at the fans of an Ayr side who withheld his registration until last summer due to a contract wrangle.

The goalscoring combination can’t have come as a surprise to anyone who watched this year’s Scottish Junior Cup final, when these two men combined in the last minute for an almost identical winning goal to help them get this far, while the 22-year-old McCracken insisted his sudden brush with fame wouldn’t alter his plans to complete his legal training at Glasgow University.

“I didn’t feel I had a point to prove against Ayr because I left on good terms and Ian McCall always praised me and wanted to keep me but he realised football wasn’t going to be my first career because I am studying to be a lawyer,” said McCracken. “Football is not going to be my first career, that will be law. In the long run it was going to be a lot more worthwhile being a lawyer.”

Auchinleck, a town with a population of 3,500, roughly the same as the capacity of Beechwood Park, is just the other side of Kilmarnock but travelling there yesterday felt like journeying back to simpler times. There are things about this club which almost defy explanation, such as their famous, and ever so slightly non-PC ‘Eeka-Peeka-Pukka-Po’ chant. This has nothing to do with Teletubbies, instead it has stuck after a deaf and mute supporter was overhead singing a version of ‘We’ll support you ever more’. There were more black and gold chequered flags hanging out of pubs yesterday than an SNP rally, with supporters given the option of paying 50p extra on their admittance to get a seat in the stand.

Five games without a win or not, Ayr made the more assured start. Andy Murdoch had a shot saved and Michael Moffat fired wide. The visitors thought they might have had a penalty for handball, the hosts had the ball in the net through Graham Wilson but it was chalked off for offside.

With legs getting tired, you might have thought Auchinleck’s chance had come and gone when Dwayne Hyslop headed wastefully wide. They didn’t. Sloan withdrew two of his star men, Graham Wilson and Jamie Glasgow, and introduced two more warriors into the fray in the form of Shankland and Keir Samson. The former – still Ayr United’s youngest ever player – speared over a free kick with only his second touch and McCracken had the freedom of Auchinleck to nod it home.

It just wasn’t Ayr’s day, skipper Ross Docherty booting the ball clean over the stands when the final whistle put them out of their misery. “I could say this is the worst result of my managerial career but I don’t want to take away from Auchinleck,” said McCall. “The game panned out the way they wanted it to pan out. We had two or three good chances but didn’t score. I don’t want to say about the penalty but you will all see it on the telly, it is a pretty clear penalty.

“It is nothing to do with Lawrence Shankland, we were good enough to win the game. But our players have had constant praise for 18 months as I have as well. But we are going to have to take the stick that comes our way because it is a bad result for our club.”

By contrast, Auchinleck’s players walked off one-by-one to a designated spot on perhaps the tightest perimeter wall in Scotland to hug a loved one or fish a child out for the celebrations. It is these grandees of the junior game who have reached the last 16, and no-one will fancy an away tie here. Who says all this is for one night only?