AYR United boss Mark Roberts said he knew skipper Scott McLaughlin would return to haunt his former side by scoring on Saturday.

Roberts revealed he discussed the former Cappielow midfielder’s unpopular status with the Morton support the day before the game and predicted he would net.

And he admitted McLaughlin and Ayr assistant Andy Millen, who is equally unloved by the Ton fans after an unsuccessful two-year spell at the turn of the millennium, relished the victory.

He said: “It was great to bounce back after the wee bad run we’ve been on lately. We’ve come here and won today and I think Morton are going to be up there this season.

“It’s a difficult place to come; it always has been for Ayr United. In all the years I’ve played at this ground, the games have never been pretty — and it turned out that way today.

“It was a dogged performance. We weren’t brilliant, but we were brilliant in terms of our work-rate, desire and shape.

“I thought Scott McLaughlin was excellent for us today. He was brilliant in the first half. He was winning every second ball and he was taking the game forward to them.

“And he got his reward with the goal. It was brilliant for Scott to get that goal. I knew he would score here.

“We were speaking about it yesterday actually and he was talking about how he gets a lot of stick here.

“A lot of the time former players often come back to haunt teams and so I just had a feeling he would score.

“He loved that goal. And somebody else enjoyed it, and he’s sitting beside me now [Andy Millen].

There are reasons for that as well but we’ll not go into them!”