GARY BOWYER was proud of his Dundee side despite their Scottish Cup fourth-round exit at the hands of St Mirren – and believes his team’s performance showed they are good enough to seal a return to the top flight at the first time of asking.
The Championship promotion hopefuls gave a good account of themselves in Paisley and fashioned the better chances over the piece but were unable to break the deadlock.
After 120 goalless minutes, the tie went to a shoot-out where the Buddies triumphed 3-0 to book their place in the hat for the next round.
Bowyer, however, was pleased with his players – particularly after first-half injuries to Tyler French and Cammy Smith.
“I thought we were brilliant, we were really good,” Bowyer beamed. “We took a Premiership team on and had a right good go at them. It shouldn’t really have got to extra-time with the chances we missed.
“I’m proud. We had the big loss of Tyler French, he’s in hospital now and it’s not looking good for him. Then we lost Cammy Kerr in the first half and had to adjust, we lost Ben Williamson yesterday afternoon.
“It was a magnificent effort from us, we took the game to them and I thought we did really well.
“We had the better chances. [Declan] Gallagher brings [Alex] Jakubiak down when he’s last man on the halfway line with a brutal challenge – we’ve not had much go for us today.
“It would be wrong to single anybody out. To a man, we defended by throwing bodies in front and blocks.
“Kwame [Thomas] was one, Lee Ashcroft, Ryan Sweeney, Josh Mulligan was terrific going back to right-back. Lyall Cameron came on and did ever so well, so did Max Anderson and Luke McCowan. Alex Jakubiak was a real handful – they took their defender [Gallagher] off because he was giving him that much trouble.
“If there’s one bit we have to be better at, it’s that top end of the pitch because the number of chances we’ve created this season we should have won more games than we have done. And we should have won that one.”
