AIDAN McAdams admits he couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present than being able to help seal Morton’s passage to the Scottish Cup third round.

The 22-year-old’s penalty shootout heroics were enough to see Ton past league rivals Dunfermline and set up a trip to Methil to take on East Fife.

McAdams believes that they can take great confidence from Tuesday night's result going into the rest of the campaign.

And the former Rangers kid revealed he felt he had a good chance of saving the visitors' last spot-kick when he saw former team-mate Lewis Mayo stepping up to take his shot.

He told the Tele: “It’s always nice to save one penalty let alone two and it so happens that I’ve been able to do that on my birthday.

“So with that and then us going through to the next round, I couldn’t have asked for much more really.

“I knew Lewis Mayo from my time at Rangers, I knew that he’d be confident and sometimes confident penalty takers like to open up their body when they’re running up.

“With it being the last one, I thought he’d do that and thankfully he did and I’ve been able to keep it out the net.

“It’s good to get the monkey off the back in terms of winning a penalty shootout because we’ve had four goes at it now.

“I don’t think that there was a poor penalty, Bluesy’s [Cameron Blues] one was a brilliant strike and Strappy [Lewis Strapp] has done the hard part by scoring the winner under pressure.

“We were probably the better team in the game really. I think we hit the bar and then they’d hit the post but other than that, I’ve not had much to do in the game really.

“I think we deserved to go through in normal time, but we obviously couldn’t find that goal.

“Extra-time is usually a tight affair, nobody wants to lose out in extra-time so we were looking to take it to a shootout.

“To be able to take it to penalties and to then save a few, it’s a nice feeling.

“Penalties are a bit of a lottery, you need to guess how they’re going to go but I’ve enjoyed my fair share of luck at them this season, including against Dunfermline the other week.”

McAdams believes fighting on two fronts is a bonus at this stage of the season as Ton aim to progress further in the Scottish Cup and battle for survival in the Championship.

He says that winning back-to-back against Queen of the South and the Pars can spur them on going into the run-in.

He said: “To get through to the next round was the aim for us and we’ll be able to take confidence into that game and even the league after competing with a team playing for play-off places.

“It’s nice to have something extra added on to our season, to have a cup run is a good thing.

“I think we were unlucky against Dunfermline in the narrow defeat the other week, so it was great to go through on Tuesday."