Jim Duffy: We didn’t get the breaks at Dumbarton

Morton manager Jim Duffy was disappointed with Saturday’s 1-0 loss at Dumbarton but felt his side were unfortunate not to take something from the game.

The Ton fell behind early in the second half to a Lewis Vaughan goal but hit the woodwork three times over the course of the 90 minutes as well as seeing a Lawrence Shankland header ruled out.

Although Cappielow gaffer Duffy admitted his side were ‘off the pace’ in the first 45 minutes, he was satisfied with their second-half display and reckons they were just a break of the ball away from having something to show for their efforts.

Speaking exclusively to gmfc.net after the match, he said: “It was a disappointing result. With the first-half performance, we were off the pace and we looked a bit leggy.

“You could see that and that’s the reason why we tried to freshen up a little bit. We could see it in the players on Thursday and Friday at training; one or two of them were just feeling the efforts from Wednesday.

“So we tried to just add a wee bit of energy and enthusiasm into the team, but there was more than the boys we left out. There were other guys as well, but obviously we didn’t want to make too many changes.

“We wanted to keep that nucleus of the back four and midfield really as much as possible, and to be fair, in terms of organisation and that type of thing we were fine.

“I felt that Dumbarton were slightly better than us in the first half and could have scored. Obviously Mark Russell cleared one off the line and there was another good opportunity that went past the post, and Michael Doyle cleared one.

“We did hit the underside of the bar and had a bit of a goalmouth scramble where we could maybe have scored, and in the second half I felt we controlled most of the game, and in the last half hour it was just non-stop attack after attack.

“We just couldn’t get the break. Again, we’ve hit the post, we’ve hit the underside of the bar, and we’ve had one chopped off, so I couldn’t really ask for too much more from the players other than perhaps a little bit more composure or a little bit more clinical.

“But it’s a difficult place to come. Dumbarton are very well organised, a strong side, and once they got a goal up they made it very compact and there wasn’t too much space, so we had to try and adapt.

“I think we did. We improved in the second half and it was just a bit unfortunate we couldn’t get the ball in the back of the net. Unfortunately, we made one mistake.

“We got caught ball watching when we allowed them to run inside with the ball, and when the ball went to the boy [Lewis Vaughan], we just switched off for a split second and like any level of football, you do that and you get punished.”

Image: David Bell