Raith Rovers manager Ian Murray happy with clean sheet and no new injury worries away to Morton

The 2,000-plus fans at Cappielow Park to see the Fifers held to a goalless draw will at least have had the consolation that it was no less eventful than the two sides’ last previous meeting, a 0-0 draw in Kirkcaldy in February, and both had more at stake that time round.

Manager Ian Murray’s visitors now have just one regular league fixture left – at home to already-relegated Arbroath this Friday, with kick-off at 7.45pm – and that’s an even deader rubber as the result won’t make any difference to either’s final league placings.

Next up for Raith – currently on 66 points from 35 fixtures, six behind table-toppers Dundee United but 11 clear of third-placed Partick Thistle – after that conclusion to their regular season will be a promotion play-off semi-final first leg away to either Partick or Airdrieonians on Tuesday, May 14, with the second leg following at Stark’s Park three days later, both 7.45pm kick-offs.

Murray, 43, was happy enough to leave Inverclyde with a clean sheet and no new injury worries ahead of the play-offs, telling Raith TV: “It’s fantastic to be where we are now compared to where we were this time last season, albeit that it’s similar in that we’ve got nothing to play for at the moment, but we’re competitors, we’ve got professional pride we want to play for as well, so we’ll give it everything against Arbroath.

“The boys gave it everything against Morton. There was nobody shirking challenges and cerainly nobody not running and working as hard as they possibly could.

“We’re ready to go. We’re looking forward to it. We’ll sit back now and watch Airdrie versus Partick in the play-offs next week.

“Who we play doesn’t really bother us. We know it’s going to be difficult. We’ve found games against everybody hard this season and we’ve certainly found games against Partick hard.

“We’re glad that we’re in that final round in terms of our league, so we’ll now recover, rest well, train well and get ready.

Going into these sorts of play-off games, we know we have players with the ability to score goals. We know we have players with good movement and slick passing, so we’ll work on that now. That’ll be our main focus going into the Arbroath game – to see if we can score a couple of goals.”

Looking back over Saturday’s stalemate, Murray said: “It was really, really tough game, a hard physical encounter. Both teams were a bit more direct than normal.

“The pitch was really difficult as well. It was really hard and really bobbly, so that made it hard for the players.

“I thought we did fine. Defensively, we were really, really good.

“There weren’t many chances in the game and not a lot of opportunities.

“I’m really pleased with our defence. I wouldn’t say it was makeshift but we made a couple of changes. There are a few boys with just little bits of niggles that we left out as a precaution. There are a couple of guys that we didn’t want to risk as well.

“It was fantastic to get another clean sheet.”