DAVID Hopkin believes Morton have discovered their mean streak after watching his players battle back to claim a crucial victory against Dunfermline.

The Ton gaffer reckons that the performance showed that the younger players in his squad are starting to mature.

He was pleased to see them come back from a goal behind to defeat the Pars and says they know what it takes to survive in the cut-throat Championship.

He said: “It’s a tough league, which everybody knows, but in the last month or so, everybody is starting to realise what it takes to play in my team — every player.

“We showed it on Saturday, we need to keep going. We said at the start of the season that the aim was to stay in the league and we’ve got young players at 19 and 20 who are starting to turn into men.

“We just need to keep plugging away no matter who we play against.

“We showed a different side to us, coming back from a goal down, especially when we haven’t won at home for a few weeks.

“To come back and show the mentality we did was fantastic, especially after an equally fantastic performance against Arbroath.

“We needed to build on it and we did.”

The Ton boss believed that they grew into their game and was impressed with the way they controlled the second half.

Hopkin admitted that he was disappointed his players conceded Euan Murray’s opener and Kevin Nisbet’s late free-kick, but he insists it didn’t take the shine off their impressive performance.

He told the Tele: “We started the game a bit slowly and Dunfermline came right out of the traps and we conceded a very poor goal but we got back into the game through a fantastic header.

“I then said to the players at half-time that every goal that we score has to be something special now and we scored another great header through both Jim McAlister and Kyle Jacobs.

“For the whole of the second half we controlled the game very well and we pressed higher up the pitch. We stopped the supply to the wide areas and into Ryan Dow and Dom Thomas who had caused us a lot of problems throughout the game.

“I was disappointed to concede the free-kick towards the end but we’d set out to get three points and we got them.

“It wasn’t just the battling qualities of the players that showed through because they did everything that I’d asked of them.

“We’ve got 19 first-team players here and they give me absolutely everything, no matter who starts in a game. It was good to see Reghan Tumilty back as well. His loan spell has done him the world of good.

“It’s got him fit and I can only credit Jim Duffy for that, he’s somebody that I know very well.

“He’s come back and he looks a different player for us. I’m just disappointed to concede two sloppy goals.”