The home dressing room at Cappielow wouldn’t have been a fun place to be on Tuesday night as Jim Duffy addressed his players after going down with a whimper to local rivals St Mirren.

Duffy has since reiterated his anger at the performance put in by his men, who have been excellent for the most part during an impressive Championship campaign.

Midfielder Andy Murdoch took in the criticism from his boss, and he fully accepts it. What he doesn’t concede though is that the small size of Morton’s squad is starting to show as we enter the season’s final throes.

The former Rangers man says that tiredness isn’t an issue at Cappielow, and they intend to prove it by sealing their place in the play-offs.

“We all accept what the manager is saying, it just wasn’t good enough,” Murdoch said. “We didn’t perform to our standards and it was a terrible night all round.

“We have to try to get it out of our systems. The game obviously meant a lot to us, and it means so much to the fans.

“When we won the first game at Cappielow against them, everyone was buzzing and Tuesday night was just the complete opposite to that.

“I can’t put my finger on why it happened, but we hope it’s just a blip.

“I don’t think you can say that it was down to tiredness. We all went into the game feeling good both physically and mentally, but on the night our decision-making just let us down.

“We can’t let that happen again when there is so much at stake, and we won’t be hiding behind tiredness as an excuse.”

Today’s visit to struggling Raith Rovers gives Morton a chance to get their form back on track, but Murdoch is taking nothing for granted against John Hughes’s relegation-threatened outfit.

“It’s vital to get back on track,” he said. “Raith are near the bottom but we know it will be a competitive game and we will have to fight hard to get a result.

“We are all fighting for something, so we know it won’t be an easy task, but we are all desperate not to let our season end on a downer.

“I think we deserve to get to the playoffs, because we’ve worked so hard, but we have to go and earn it. It has been a great season, so we owe it to ourselves to get over the line.

“Once we are there, nobody holds any fears, but we’re not looking that far ahead. We just want to get over what happened the other night, and the best way to do that is to win against Raith Rovers.”