They became the media’s favourite team. Pundits and journalists alike simply couldn’t stop heaping praise on Jim Duffy and his work down Cappielow way. “Look at the job Jim Duffy’s doing at Morton,” coupled with, “they’d be happy just staying in that division,” were soundbites that seemed to accompany Morton’s season, and in many ways they were correct. This is a team that had only came back up into the Championship last season, recording a respectable fifth placed finish. The previous campaign in the second tier saw the worst Morton team of all time slump to relegation, losing 10-2 to Hamilton Accies on their way out. This is a club beginning to find its feet again, on and off the park. More progress was made this season, a place in the playoffs secured, as well as a semi-final at Hampden and a narrow exit to Rangers in the Scottish Cup. It was a good season. The problem is, it could’ve been so much more.
It may sound harsh to say Morton “collapsed” in the final quarter of this season. It may be unfair on the very young group of players that gave Morton fans one of their most enjoyable seasons in decades. But that’s what happened. Morton utterly imploded, and it is far from the first time.
Saturday, 18th of March, when a late Kudus Oyenuga header gave Morton three precious points at The Falkirk Stadium, looked like it could’ve been a season defining day. Duffy’s men had once again beaten their biggest playoff rivals, and with an undefeated home record behind them were in pole position to finish second and even challenge Hibs for the title. In true Morton fashion, they did not win another game.
The following week a bigger than normal crowd descended on Cappielow to see if the Ton could manage a staggering unbeaten year at home. Dunfermline were the opposition, spooked by a defeat at home to Ayr United the week previously, what could possibly go wrong? Yeah, they lost. To say it had all been plain sailing up until the Dunfermline defeat however would be lying. The cracks in the foundations had been there for months, but the team kept finding way after way to paper over them. Now, the house had totally collapsed and Duffy had no idea how to rebuild it.
To pinpoint exactly why things transpired in the way they did, you have to go back to the previous meeting with Dunfermline. A game in which literally everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Morton missed a penalty, sold the jerseys for both of Dunfermline’s goals, and lost both Jai Quitongo and Cetic loanee Jamie Lindsay to injury. Lindsay was out for several weeks, but Michael Tidser is a more than adequate replacement, even if it required a change of system. Quitongo, however, was a different story.
He’d been Morton’s breakout star, attracting considerable interest from north and south of the border and had quickly become a fan favourite. The system which had been so successful for Morton up until that point was practically built around him. “Duffyball” as it affectionately became known was a brand of fast and direct football. Essentially, it involved the fullbacks lofting the ball up to Quitongo, him controlling it, and either running at goal himself or laying it off to one of the other attackers. It was meat and potatoes fitbaw, and something which Duffy had been criticised for playing in campaigns previously, but it worked. It wasn’t just that for 90 minutes though, Morton played some fantastic passing football earlier on in the season getting the best out of the likes of Gary Oliver and Ross Forbes – their 5-0 horsing of Queen of the South at Palmerston being a prime example. But at times they needed an outlet, and with Quitongo gone, there simply wasn’t one.
With Quitongo ruled out for the season, it was assumed Morton would dip into the transfer market to find something close to a replacement. Rory Loy looked to be Greenock-bound before he somehow ended up at rock-bottom St Mirren, leaving Morton with just one January arrival, Lawrence Shankland. He’d been punted back to Aberdeen by St Mirren because he was, quite frankly, gubbins, but Duffy signed him. He literally could not have been any more different to Quitongo. He was overweight, he was lazy, he was slower than a week in the jail and crucially could not score goals. He was everything St Mirren fans described him as, but was somehow expected to play the “Quitongo role”. It was never going to work, and it didn’t.
The saving grace for Morton during this period was Ross Forbes. His set-piece delivery to Thomas O’Ware in particular was Morton’s biggest weapon for the majority of the season, and the midfielder chipped in with crucial goals himself. It dried up though. Eventually opponents knew exactly how to stop him, and given his limited mobility on the pitch, there wasn’t much he could do about it. It got so bad that some supporters were even calling for him to be dropped for the playoffs, such was his lack of influence on games in the final months. Morton’s two main sources of goals had been taken away from them and they simply couldn’t adapt.
With no outlet up top, more pressure was being put on the defence. Thomas O’Ware and Lee Kilday have come on leaps and bounds, but even they started making errors. Gavin Gunning’s departure in January didn’t have an immediate negative impact, but his presence later on in the season could’ve been crucial. Sloppy goals conceded against the likes of Hibs and Dundee United simply wouldn’t have been tolerated by “Sir Gav” and his leadership could’ve been invaluable in the run-in. Derek Gaston losing form and forgetting how to use his arms properly hindered the team late on, but a tighter defence would’ve stopped some of those clangers altogether.
Andy Murdoch and Jamie Lindsay were Morton’s dynamic duo in the middle of the park for much of the season. They were tenacious, determined but both very good footballers as well. They bossed it in the first half of the campaign, but they lost steam. Much like Liverpool found out this campaign, players that are pressing and harrying opposition for 90 minutes need a rest. They simply can’t maintain those energy levels for a full season and need to be rotated when possible. Morton simply didn’t have any other options, meaning they played most games, but were utterly shattered by the end. It’s another example of squad depth letting the team down.
You can place blame on Duffy, you can place blame on players losing form, you can blame the board for not giving the manager more money to spend to bolster the squad. You can blame all of them, or you can just accept it. Many have accepted it. After the 3-0 drubbing by Dundee United at Tannadice in the playoffs, the team were applauded off. Not just a smattering of applause, but chanting and singing, the whole shebang, like we’d won the game. Chants of “There’s only one Jim Duffy” gave it a very Gordon Strachan in Gibraltar vibe. It felt like a celebration of failure, more than a mutual show of appreciation between the fans and players like it should’ve been. It felt incredibly small time.
That long bus journey home from Tayside had me questioning everything about Morton. I’ve never seen us play top flight football, but for years it has been drilled into me what we “should” be. Every season, Morton fans watch on, face pushed against the glass, as clubs like Ross County, St Johnstone, Inverness, St Mirren etc win cup competitions, or venture into Europe once again. These were teams not so long ago that were below Morton or at least competing with them, but like everyone else has passed them by. We have no divine right to be playing top flight football and I’m not having a dig at any of the teams mentioned – but that should be the bar. That is where we should be aiming, we shouldn’t have to be content with midtable mediocrity in the second tier. We can go into the top flight, and we can become more than cannon fodder. It isn’t impossible for clubs of our size, but some seem to have accepted it is. This is not to say in a league with Dundee United and Hibs in it we should’ve been expecting promotion, absolutely not, but the reaction to not achieving it was worrisome.
The narrative has changed surrounding Morton. Those same pundits claiming we should be happy avoiding relegation, and how magnificent a job Duffy has done with a club of our size not so long ago were talking about how great it’d be to see Morton back in the big time. The same treatment the likes of Falkirk and Dunfermline currently receive. It’s nonsense and I don’t agree with it, but that talk has disappeared. You can attribute it to many of Scottish Football’s talking heads being pals with Duffy and wanting to give him credit for a job well done, sure, but it just feels like there’s been an attitude change in recent seasons, and perhaps some of it has rubbed off on the fans.
You can look up, wistfully at times, at the likes of Partick Thistle and St Johnstone, but you can also look down the way, at the mess at Raith Rovers and very nearly St Mirren find themselves in and consider yourself quite lucky you’re not in that position. But every football fan should dare to dream. Otherwise, what’s the point? Thistle and St Johnstone are miles ahead of us commercially, but progress is being made on that front to get the business side of Morton up to where it should’ve been years ago. The newly-established youth setup is already producing some prospects and the community side of the club is the best in Scotland. New Chief Executive Warren Hawke is working to restore the severely fractured relationship between Morton fans and their club. It will take time, everything will, but if there is a clear strategy put in place Morton can progress, every club can.
Season 2016/17 unfortunately has to go down as a missed opportunity. Falkirk, Dundee United and Hamilton are no great shakes and presented a reasonable opportunity to gain promotion. Morton showed for three quarters of the season they were more than capable of matching anyone in the league, but they just self-destructed. It joins a long line of similar seasons, most recently 2012-13 (shitting the bed to Partick Thistle) as well as 2003-04, of which you can read a terrific Nutmeg article on.
It’s another season of “what could’ve been?” for Morton. A club which is its own worst enemy most of the time. There’s still an appetite for success there though. There’s still a huge desire from fans desperate to see their team mixing it with the big boys again, and most like me waiting to see it for the first time. That segment of the support currently outweighs the “lets just be happy with where we are” brigade, but for how long that will last is difficult to say. There aren’t thousands of Morton fans in hiding, waiting to come out at the first sign of a trophy. But there is a strong enough core fanbase there to support top tier football, and for once it feels like there’s a board that can too. We’re a diddy team, we always have been and always will, but there’s no reason we can’t be a bloody good one. Reach for the stars and, even if we miss, at least we’re not Ayr United.
By Evan McFarlane (@EvanMcFarlane)