Equaliser bugs Euan Murray

“I felt on the park that we could have played for another half hour and they weren’t going to score.

Before Scottish Football was suspended on Friday the 13th, Euan Murray joked that he was the answer in Kevin Nisbet’s absence.

The 26 year old who signed from Raith Rovers in June 2019 fired the Pars into a 72nd minute lead against Partick Thistle before the virus enforced shutdown but even Euan had to admit that Kevin is a big miss. The only consolation from the suspension of the Championship could be that the Pars top goalscorer should have recovered from his ankle injury by the time football resumes. Euan reckoned you can see how big a miss he is in his absence:-

“We have had chances and if he had been there he probably would have taken a couple of them. The boys who have come in - Jon Afolabi, Gabby McGill, Lewis McCann and evening Dom Thomas going up - it is a hard role for them to fill with Nizzy being out. They have done it well, especially the likes of McCann who had not played for a good while before he came in.

“I think everyone who has come in has played their part. Obviously he is a big miss but we still need to go into every game thinking that we can and should be winning. With the chances that we have created, we probably should have.”

Euan is still getting over the gutting 94th minute equaliser that Thistle scored on Tuesday night.

“There were three things about it, one after the other that I can count that is clear and obvious that it should not have been a goal. It goes against you, a lot of people say that these things level themselves out but it seems to be with us that we are going to have some amount of luck coming our way if it is going to level it out. It seems for weeks now that we cannot get a decision and everything seems to be going against us.

“It is hard because you put so much work into it. Yes in the first half we were lucky to come in at 1-0 I don’t think anyone would doubt that but once we had changed the shape we came out in the second half and got to grips with it, I thought in the second half we were the better side.

“I felt on the park that we could have played for another half hour and they weren’t going to score. Danny Devine has had a great block right after we scored but other than that everything they were launching at us I was comfortable with. If you spoke to Danny and Lewis Martin we all felt comfortable that we were going to keep a clean sheet. So for it to happen the way it did, especially after defending so many balls into our box was sickening.”

In recent seasons Euan’s has chipped in with a decent number of goals for a defender but he feels that his Dunfermline tally should be greater than just two:-

“I felt against Queens that the ball was over the line. It is alright scoring but the most important thing is the clean sheet. I’d rather have the clean sheet, for the way it got taken away the way it did was frustrating.”

Euan’s goal at the Energy Check Stadium was something that had been worked on the training ground, he was pleased that Lee Ashcroft and Danny Devine had also contributed of late from setplays:-

“In the first part of the season we probably hadn’t had enough chances or scored enough from setpieces. It was something that we addressed and worked on and it has started to come off for us now.

“To be honest on Tuesday night I am not sure that it was meant for me. It was worked for the strikers but I saw it coming and I wasn’t sure who was behind me so it was one of them, I just went for it and thankfully it was a decent enough finish. They tried to handball it on the line but it still managed to get in.”

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