Ricki ecstatic at signing on for a fourth season

Ricki Lamie says he loves playing for Morton and so was thrilled to be offered a contract extension that would guarantee him a fourth season at Cappielow.

The defender was one of five players to be tabled new deals by manager Jim Duffy at the end of the 2016/17 campaign and put pen to paper this past Friday.

Lamie is one of the club’s longest-serving players having joined shortly after Duffy’s appointment as manager and revealed he was just as ecstatic to sign this, his fifth deal as he was his first back in the summer of 2014.

Speaking exclusively to gmfc.net, he said: “Obviously I love it here. That’s why I signed again. And I was delighted when the gaffer offered me a new deal.

“The gaffer first approached me a couple of weeks ago, before the play-offs, to say he was happy with my contribution and would be interested in keeping me on.

“It was my fifth contract that I’ve signed at the club and I’m ecstatic, as I am every time I’ve been offered something. I never envisioned this happening, not at all, when I first signed.

“You see it in football. Somebody gets a new lease of life, which I feel as if I did when I came to the club, and a taste of success and of full-time football.

“Those three things combined with the graft I’ve put in and the opportunity the gaffer and the club have given has got me to where I am just now.

“It means you can keep progressing. I feel as though with each contract I sign that I’m getting better as a player; I’m getting more confortable at the club which makes you better, and that can only lead to success.

“My mates have come down and watched games and my dad as well, and they’ve said it’s night and day from when I was 18 or 19, playing part-time and training two nights a week.

“As a player training full-time every day and playing as your job, there’s no hiding the fact that you advance your game and advance physically.

“Mentally too. That was a big aspect of my game that I need to improve and I feel that I have. Every week and month that has gone by I felt as though I’ve developed my all-round game. You’re learning every day.”

Image: Jonathan Mitchell