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Ian Murray says Raith Rovers must ‘take their medicine’ and push for play-offs after ‘occasion got to players’

The Rovers manager said his players started slowly and challenged his players to use the second-half performance as motivation in the Scottish Championship.

Ian Murray said last season's SPFL Trust Trophy final defeat was 'a sore one'. Image: SNS.
Ian Murray said last season's SPFL Trust Trophy final defeat was 'a sore one'. Image: SNS.

Ian Murray was “extremely disappointed” with Sunday’s SPFL Trust Trophy final defeat but called on his Raith Rovers players not to dwell on it.

Rovers went down 1-0 to Hamilton courtesy of a goal from former full-back Reghan Tumilty, who won the competition last season with the Stark’s Park club.

Accies were reduced to 10 men early in the second half but rode the subsequent waves of pressure and thoroughly deserved their win.

For much of the second half the Accies defence barely let Rovers through, rhen towards the end of the game – as the 10 men tired – they found keeper Ryan Fulton in inspired form.

“We are extremely disappointed,” said Murray.

“On the game itself, we started really poorly and we looked tentative and nervous.

Murray was ‘extremely disappointed’. Image: SNS.

“Listen, I understand that because football players are human and an occasion can get to players – and in that first 20 minutes, it looked like that happened in all honesty.

Not our day

“Maybe towards the end of that first half, we started to look like ourselves a little bit, but we lost a really bad goal from a corner kick.

“But second half, I thought we were really good and excellent in general.

“We just couldn’t get that goal and their goalkeeper made a couple of really good saves.

Stanton came close to scoring. Image: SNS.

“We made a couple of poor decisions too, but in football terms, we were really good.

“It just got to that stage where the ball wasn’t dropping for us and their goalkeeper was saving everything – you do think then that it just isn’t going to be your day and that it was Hamilton’s.

“You can’t dwell on things too long,” added the Rovers boss.

“You don’t enjoy wins for too long so you certainly cannot dwell too much on your defeats and your disappointments.

“We have to use this going forward and who knows, this could be one of the best things that could have happened to us.

“But at the moment it certainly doesn’t feel like that and we have to acknowledge that we have had a fantastic opportunity to win a trophy today and we didn’t do that.

Vaughan tested the keeper three times. Image: SNS.

“If we play like we did in the first half, we’ll have no chance of making the play-offs. If we play like we did in the second half, then we have a good chance.

“But right now we need to lick our wounds and take our medicine.”

Hindsight

The manager’s big decision of the day was who to leave on the bench.

Aidan Connolly has been a standout this season but missed the six-goal win over Cove Rangers due to injury.

Murray stuck with the same attack from the week before and said in hindsight he may have done things differently.

“It was so difficult,” he said. “Perhaps we would have changed one or two decisions looking back on it now.

“Isma has had a really tough week personally.

“He had a problem back home which was sad for him and I think you could see on the pitch that it maybe affected him.”

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