BRIAN McLean believes that the Scottish Cup could provide Morton with a positive distraction as they look to gain some momentum in the final month of the season.

The veteran central defender admits that Ton’s priority firmly remains on staying in the Championship.

But he hopes that this weekend's third round tie against East Fife at New Bayview will help spur them on ahead of what could be a hectic month.

While McLean was disappointed with the result against John McGlynn’s Raith Rovers at the weekend, he insists that he and his team-mates can recover from it with a positive response this weekend and progress to the fourth round.

He told the Tele: “We’ve got the cup game this weekend where we can do things a wee bit differently, but the priority firmly remains on league duty.

“It’s another game where we’ll look to have a positive response and a positive result to boot.

“We want to pick some momentum up and we wanted to keep some momentum going into the Raith Rovers game at the weekend after the last two victories against Queens and then Dunfermline during the week.

“We’ll be looking to use that to our advantage going into the last part of the season and we’ve got a big and competitive squad here, so I’m sure that everyone will be chomping at the bit to be fighting for their place in the team during training this week.

“It’s been a long season, albeit a condensed one at that, and there’s no point in dwelling on specific games.

“It’s up to us as professionals to dust ourselves down, analyse our performances and to move on from it and see what we can improve on.

“It is just those fine margins that are the difference of being on the end of a defeat or taking three points up the road.”

McLean was adamant that he and his team-mates can’t rely on favours from elsewhere if they are to remain in the Championship next season.

He believes that Ton’s fate is still in their own hands but called for a more ruthless approach in the final third going forward.

He said: “We can only affect what we do from here on in and at the weekend we didn’t affect the game enough in the final third.

“We were defending pretty deeply as a group against Raith, so it’s up to us to be a little bit more attacking, especially away from home.

“When you play away from home you’ll be limited to the numbers that you can promote going forward, but staying in the division is still in our hands.

“We were in the game for long spells and we didn’t create enough, Aidan McAdams didn’t have a lot to do.”