MORTON defender Darragh O’Connor feels he and his teammates deserved the hairdryer treatment from boss Dougie Imrie after Saturday’s Dens Park collapse - and says they must use it as motivation to prevent a repeat.

Ton welcome Raith Rovers to Cappielow this weekend looking to make it back to back home victories for the first time since February and the big defender is hoping that his side can make up for their defensive frailties that were on display last time out.

O’Connor believes this is when he and the rest of the squad can show what they’re made of.

He told the Tele: “It’s a good group of boys that we’ve got, we know how to bounce back from setbacks like that from the weekend.

“But the gaffer, after the game, told us a few home truths in the dressing room.

“I think that the boys needed to hear that as well.

"The Championship this year has been the hardest it’s been for a while.

“But honestly it’s depressing that we’ve come away from the Dundee game with a point when it should’ve been all three.

“We would’ve been able to climb the table and even close in on those top four spots, but that’s football - it’s about how we react to it now."

O'Connor admits that the way the team conceded three cheap goals wasn't acceptable.

He said: “The results went our way to close the result to the top four, but set pieces just killed us and it’s a very disappointing aspect for myself and the back four especially. We pride ourselves on defending the goal and at the weekend Dundee just wanted it more when it fell into the box.

“We’d said at half time that we’d been sloppy and that we needed to address second phases from corners and wide free kicks, things like that. But it just carried on into the second half and we were rightfully punished for it.”

Yet O’Connor believes that Ton must take the positives from their performance against Gary Bowyer’s men as they head into the final three games of the season.

He said: “We have to take encouragement from the game. For 75 minutes I thought we played some very good football and I’d say we shaded the chances.

“But for 15 minutes they got on top and capitalised on that. But look, we can't dwell on it too much, we need to move on and quickly.

“We’ve got a massive push in the last three games now, they’re all massive games in their own right, we’ll focus on Raith this weekend but we know what we need to do to make things right now.”