RAGING Morton boss Jim Duffy read his players the riot act after they blew a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 away at basement boys Alloa Athletic last night.

Ton looked to have made the most of the lifeline thrown to them after the original fixture was abandoned due to heavy snow with them trailing to a Michael Duffy strike.

Racing into a 2-0 lead thanks to early goals from Declan McManus and Stefan McCluskey, the Greenock men looked to be well on their way to three points.

Although left-back Colin Hamilton halved the deficit with a deflected drive shortly after Ton had score their second, Duffy’s men continued to control the first half.

But they were a totally different side after the break and completely lost their grip on the game, handing the initiative to a Wasps side that levelled things up through a Dougie Hill header.

Duffy was angry with the way his players surrendered their control in the second half and allowed two points to slip through their fingers.

He told the Tele: “I read the riot act in there, aye. It was two points thrown away. You are 2-0 up and dominant in the game, with another two or three good chances to score. We started the game really brightly, scored two really good goals and Scott Gallacher has had three great saves, but we really should have had the game sewn up, and then we got sloppy.

“We dropped our standards for a few minutes and it’s 2-1. Obviously the goal [coming] so soon after we’ve scored the second gives Alloa a lift and allows them back into the match.

“So I wasn’t pleased at all because the players didn’t perform at all in the second half. It wasn’t a lack of hard work or effort, but we didn’t do what we did so well in the first half hour particularly.

“We didn’t pass the ball well and we certainly didn’t impose ourselves at all in the second half. We fell out of it, but all credit to Alloa for getting back into it.

“You see it time and time again in football – a team goes 2-0 up but if the opposition gets it back to 2-1 they get a bit of impetus and the team that loses the goal seems to fall back. You try to impress upon them that they’ve got to step up, and we tried to impress that upon them at half-time but they didn’t take it on board and Alloa pressed.

“I can’t really remember Jamie [McGowan] having a real save to make if truth be told, so from that perspective a lot was breaking down at our 18-yard box or we managed to clear the danger.

“Certainly Alloa were on the front foot but without really getting in behind us or without really testing our goalkeeper, so we were defending it pretty well.

“But it’s a set-piece. Dougie Hill is good in the air but he got a free header and that’s disappointing because we had enough height and presence to deal with that. From that perspective it was a poor goal for us to lose, basic defending, because even though we didn’t play well in the second half we still defended the area well enough. 

“For all we protected Jamie very well, those are the moments that your concentration has got to be 100 per cent, so for me conceding that equaliser was, of course, disappointing.

“At the end of the day, a point away from home is not the worst result in the world – but it’s two points thrown away, there’s no getting away from that. We should have won this game.”

After an unfruitful search to bring in an experienced goalkeeper as cover for the injured Derek Gaston, Duffy selected development squad shot-stopper Jamie McGowan between the sticks.

The 19-year-old, whose only previous senior start came in a Scottish Cup loss at Spartans, was both absolved of any responsibility for the equaliser and commended for his performance by his manager.

He added: “The second goal was down to defenders. If you do man-marking you’ve got an opponent to mark and that’s your job, so I don’t blame Jamie.

“He didn’t really have too much to do, he kicked well, his distribution and decision making was good. He only really had one incident where he had to come through bodies and he came and took it.”

In terms of his team selection, the Ton boss went with a 4-3-1-2 formation, adapting his system due to the fact Jack Ross had drastically narrowed the Indodrill Stadium pitch since taking charge.

Duffy explained: “The last time we came here we tried to play with two wide players, but the pitch was so tight that we just couldn’t get any width.

“They could double up on the sides, so we thought, ‘Right we’ll play it through the middle’ and give us an extra body in there. We had Stef [McCluskey] in behind the strikers, picking up those balls and finding areas of space with Denny [Johnstone] and Declan [McManus] stretching them.

“It worked really well [in the first half], but in the second half we stopped doing those things so we changed it and went back to a four with Stef out wide.

“They were picking up second balls too much and switching the play. In the first half they were more concerned about us; in the second half we were trying to stop them.”