SAUCHIE Juniors defender Jon Tully admitted that his side's performance in last Saturday's Super League defeat to Broxburn was simply not up to scratch.

The Wee County side went 2-0 down but fought back to level things up after the break with goals from Gary McCulloch and Callum Robertson.

However, Broxburn replied with two late goals to consign Sauchie to defeat, and the centre-back reckons they were made to pay a heavy price for their errors, writes Jamie Hall. 

Tully told Advertiser Sport: “We had a terrible first half and we were never really at the races. If you start like that you are going to get punished. We got a bollocking at half time which helped us at the start of the second half. We came out and played well but you can't only do that for half an hour. You need to keep going for the whole 45 minutes. As soon as we scored the second goal we just stopped again and they punished us.

“At half time we thought that as long as we scored an early goal in the second half we would have a chance of winning the game, but after we scored the second goal we just had a five-minute spell where we stopped playing. If you do that teams are going to punish you and they did that.

“After the third goal our heads went down a bit and because we were trying to force our way back into the game, we were a bit less organised. That created gaps which they were able to exploit.”

Despite the damaging defeat, the former East Stirlingshire defender says Sauchie can cut out the mistakes and return to winning ways following the loss, which was their first of 2016.

He said: “Myself and the boys will be ready to go again in training. We will keep working and hopefully we can cut out the mistakes and start picking up points again.”

Tully has just returned to Sauchie after a spell League Two with the Shire, and he revealed he is delighted to be back playing regular football.

He added: “I am enjoying being back. I haven't played for a while so it is good to be getting games again. We will pick ourselves up. There are too many good players for us not to do that. We just need to sort out the mistakes and we will be fine.”