KILMARNOCK fans might do well to remember not to wind Connah's Quay Nomads' stopper Lewis Brass up tomorrow night.

Brass was forced to deal with some intense fan scrutiny during the first-half of last week's first-leg at Belle Vue, the 22-year-old's patience eventually wearing thin at half-time.

Having received a barrage of abuse, the last straw was narrowly avoiding being struck on the head by an object thrown in his direction, Brass voicing his thoughts as the two teams went in at the break.

Brass is expecting more of the same verbal jousting with a bumper Rugby Park crowd, but the stopper is ready as Nomads look to overturn a 2-1 deficit.

"I took 45 minutes of complete abuse," he said. "That made me think 'right, I'm going to really show you what I can do'. It gives you that fire to go and win the game, unfortunately that wasn't the case."

Kilmarnock's vocal fanbase probably feared the worst when Brass produced an instinctive finger-tip save to keep out Stephen O'Donnell's deflected effort from spinning into the top left corner of his net.

Brass reflected: "I'm not going to lie, I thought 'this is going in, I need to dive' and I just flung myself and managed to get my hand to the ball and keep it out.

"There was no technique to it, it was last second instinct save. It was special, especially when the game was so tight at the time.

"I think it gave me a boost and made me think 'we can really take this to them' because that was probably their first shot on target, and around the 70th minute, which shows how well we did to contain a good Kilmarnock side."

That save seemed to galvanise Nomads, who opened the scoring soon after as Greg Taylor could only slide Callum Roberts' cross into his own net.

Nomads were on the brink of a memorable win, Brass continuing: "It was pretty special, the atmosphere was bouncing.

"There was a little bit of disappointment in the result, but absolute credit to the boys to come up against a Kilmarnock side as good and as physical as they were and to hold them until the 81st minute.

"For them to need to get a soft penalty, which it was in my eyes, to bring them back into the game was credit to the boys because they couldn't break us down."

Eamonn Brophy converted the Kilmarnock penalty, awarded after Roberts had been adjudged to have brought Chris Burke down in the area.

Brass was left wondering what might have been after studying Brophy's previous penalties.

"I knew he would go down the middle or to my right, but standing still is easier said than done," he said.

"If you stand and he puts it down the side you look silly.

"I gambled and unfortunately it's hit my foot and still gone in."

Worse was to follow for Nomads as Stuart Findlay headed a stoppage time winner to give Kilmarnock control of the tie.

But Brass remains confident of pulling off a memorable European victory.

"There's nothing stopping us," said Brass when asked about the chances of a Nomads win.

"We go out there, do what we did in the first-leg, get an early goal and anything can happen.

"There were a lot of positive to take from the game because it was only in the last 10 minutes where they've scored two goals.

"We can learn from the mistakes that led to their goals and if we do we can score two goals and keep a clean sheet because the boys are perfectly capable of doing that."