JOHN Sutton admits that coming out of retirement to play for Morton wasn’t part of his plans — but says he’s excited to pull on his boots again for David Hopkin’s side.

The 35-year-old insisted he had no regrets about calling time on his playing career last year before coming out of retirement yesterday to sign a one-year playing contract.

The club’s head of youth development decided to call time at the end of the 2017-18 season when he earned promotion to the Premiership with the Ton’s Renfrewshire rivals St Mirren.

The striker says it hadn’t been an objective of his to return after being content with his coaching role last season.

He told the Tele: “It wasn’t something that was really at the forefront of my mind, but now I’m coming back in.

“It was Dave [MacKinnon, Morton’s chief executive] and the gaffer that kept saying to me ‘you should really consider pulling your shooting boots back on’.

“I had offers last season to carry on when I was leaving St Mirren but I was quite excited about working with the development squad at Morton.

“But the way the club’s getting structured now I’m going to be able to do both. That was the big thing for me and it is an exciting challenge for me moving forward.

“It’s going to be a younger squad, but I feel like there’s a lot of exciting things happening at the club and things are moving in the right direction.

“Hopefully I can play my part in that, coaching and helping out a little bit with the playing side as well.

“I don’t have any regrets about finishing up before. I got promoted with St Mirren, you generally look for a new challenge.

“I was speaking to Derek Anderson [director of youth] and working with the youngsters was something I really wanted to do.”

Sutton revealed previous Ton managers had tried to convince him to come out of retirement, but he was convinced to take up the dual role after Hopkin overhauled the structure to have the youth teams and first team train alongside each other more often.

He added: “It was mentioned now and again by the managers before, but it was a different sort of set-up last year.

“We would normally split the groups. I’d take my team on one pitch and the first team would be elsewhere.

“I think this year there will be a lot done in terms of working together, which is great for the young lads coming through, competing and learning from the first team and seeing the first-team manager’s input – and seeing his input first hand for a lot of days.

“Now the playing stuff is all sorted I’m really excited about it. 
“Hopefully I can do my bit and contribute when and where required.”