Ayr United 1-2 Queen's Park: Visitors leapfrog hosts into seventh in Scottish Championship

Ruari Paton headed the visitors ahead

Queen's Park deservedly beat Ayr United to leapfrog their hosts into seventh place in the Scottish Championship.

Ruari Paton headed the visitors ahead from close range after 19 minutes and fellow striker Cillian Sheridan fired the visitors further ahead on the hour.

Centre-half Jack Sanders headed Ayr back into the game with 12 minutes remaining from a corner.

But the Glasgow side saw it out to go five games unbeaten and drop Ayr to third bottom of the table.

• Reaction & as it happened

Ayr had beaten Queen's Park twice at Hampden Park this season, but they are now one behind the visitors and only three ahead of Inverness Caledonian Thistle, who drew away to leaders Dundee United.

Ayr United manager Scott Brown: "That's the worst performance since coming in, there was no composure on the ball, no real quality in the final third. The only one good thing about football is there is another game coming up on Friday [against Airdrieonians] so we can rest and recover and watch that game back because they have to watch that and have an understanding of how composed Queen's Park were, they stuck to their guns."

Queen's Park manager Callum Davidson: "Most of the first half I was really delighted with. We knew Ayr were going to come back at us, they've probably got the goal against the run of play a little bit. They score and it's a really important 10 minutes to see the game out, you saw a lot of experience out on the pitch today. Ruari's obviously got a great work ethic. Cilian [Sheridan] coming in he's obviously with a strike partner. Cilian's obviously helped him."