Duffy: The second half wasn’t good enough

Manager Jim Duffy says he was extremely disappointed with the 1-0 loss to Falkirk, adding that the second-half performance was not good enough and that his team lost their way after conceding to a Joe McKee free-kick.

When asked for his reaction to the result, Duffy said:

“I’m extremely disappointed with the result. In the second half the performance wasn’t good enough. In the first-half, we played quite well and were certainly the better team.

“There weren’t too many goalmouth incidents. [David] Mitchell made a good save from Ross Forbes and we had a few other shots peppered around the goal.

“But once the Falkirk goal went in we lost our way, and that surprised me because we’ve come back several times from goals and showed a positive response. But we didn’t today.

“You’re angry at full-time because it’s about today’s game, how we approached it and how we dealt with it, and we didn’t deal with it well enough.”

The Ton boss says there has to be a level of introspection after the loss, from both the players and coaching staff. He added:

“We all have to look at ourselves and think that we didn’t contribute enough. I look at myself and think: ‘Was the team right, was the selection right, was how we asked the players to play right?’

“Then the players on the pitch have to take a degree of responsibility as well, because I felt we kept running into dead ends today.

“We kept over-running the ball, kept giving the ball away cheaply, we weren’t quick enough or slick moving the ball against a very resolute Falkirk defence.

“We didn’t stretch the game, we didn’t make the game wide enough, or have a little bit more pateince in the second half. All those factors allowed Falkirk to manage the game.”

Former Cappielow midfielder Joe McKee scored the game’s only goal with a 35-yard free-kick, and Duffy admitted goalkeeper Derek Gaston was disappointed to concede the strike, explaining:

“Gats was disappointed, of course. It’s a shot he should save and he knows that. As I’ve mentioned over the last couple of weeks, he’s been absolutely magnificent.

“It’s just a little lapse of concetration, and in tight games that can sometimes be difference. If you do that you take a point; it’s not perfect but you take it and move on.

“Over the 90 minutes today I think we probably deserved a point, and it’s just the little instances when you switch off for a second that we’ve been punished.”

Image: The Falkirk Herald