DOUGIE Imrie insists Morton didn't deserve to suffer more Fir Park heartache as their Scottish Cup hopes came to a cruel end against Motherwell.

Robbie Muirhead's delightful strike put the visitors ahead in extra-time and just as it looked like Ton would end their Fir Park hoodoo, Michael Ledger brought down Ross Tierney in the box.

Kevin van Veen fired home the spot-kick before Liam Donnelly struck the winner in the 120th minute to seal the Steelmen's place.

Imrie says Ledger was unlucky to concede the controversial spot-kick and felt they deserved to be in the next round after an 'immense' display.

He told the Tele: “How am I feeling? Gutted, absolutely gutted.

“For 120 minutes I thought that we were the better team by miles.

“They had better spells in the game, but I thought that to a man, we were miles ahead of them.

“Two decisions cost us the game and it’s two decisions that I'm bitterly disappointed with, but we’ve just got to move on from it.

“I’d need to see the incident back fully, but at the time the penalty shout did look soft.

“But in your own box you’ve got to do all that you can to keep your hands down because referees have got a job to do and Nick [Walsh] has called it the way that he's seen it, which is fair enough.

"But I do think that it was soft.

“When we went 1-0 up it didn’t necessarily mean that it was job done or anything like that because we still had 15 minutes to go.

“Motherwell are a good team, they’re sitting fourth in the Premiership for a reason this season because of the quality that they’ve got, and they’ve done well this season.

“I am just bitterly disappointed in the way that we lost that.

“I’m just gutted for my players, they were immense."

Despite the defeat, Imrie says there were plenty of positives to take from their performance.

After taking Well to extra-time, the 38-year-old believes that his players can take a lot of confidence into their relegation battle in the Championship.

He said: “It’s pleasing not to have been beaten in 90 minutes still. Motherwell are a good team and they were a tough test for us but I thought we stood up to that to a man.

“If we can keep on turning out performances like this, then we’ll be fine.

“The performance can give us a lot of heart going into the rest of the season, but the players have been great since the second I stepped in the door.

“Though I think that the better team never went through, which is disappointing."