Calderwood: We were never comfortable

Published: 07 Feb 2010 - 14:30:22

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Jimmy Calderwood watched his Kilmarnock side beat Inverness 3-0 to reach their first Scottish Cup quarter-final since 2001 and insisted he felt the result was in doubt almost until the final whistle.Conor Sammon opened the scoring and team-mate Liam Kelly then netted in each half to seal the win. But Calderwood believes that a memorable week, most notably last Tuesday's defeat of Celtic, took its toll on his players' performance.He said: "It was never comfortable as we started at a slow pace and never really got out of that for the whole of the first half and I wasn't sure we were safe until there were five minutes to go."We looked flat after all the efforts on Tuesday and the players have had so many games in such a short space of time so I thought it looked a tired effort."I was very impressed with Inverness - they played well and I think that if they'd got the first goal it would have been very difficult for us to come back."We got our goals at the right times and kept a clean sheet in a game I can't say we played really well in, but it shows our players have character and that's the big thing for the weeks coming up."