Morton’s Thomas O’Ware is hoping that the close-knit nature of the Cappielow squad can be the foundation for a cup shock when Jim Duffy’s side travel to Celtic Park on Sunday.
Some disillusioned Celtic fans may claim that a win for Morton wouldn’t actually be that much of a surprise at all given their recent form, but O’Ware says the men from Greenock aren’t being lulled into a false sense of security as they travel to take on the champions. He knows that for Morton to triumph, they will have to perform collectively as greater than the sum of their parts.
He said: “We’re all excited about the challenge ahead. It’s going to be a great opportunity for us and hopefully it can be a great day for the club.
“If we are to win on Sunday we’re going to need everybody to pull together, roll up their sleeves and fight for each other. We’re a really close group, and obviously at training though the boys have been talking about the game as it gets closer and how much we’re all looking forward to it.
“We have belief in ourselves that we can go and do well, but at the end of the day Celtic are still the best team in the country. They might be going through a sticky spell at the moment by their own high standards, but they’re still Celtic and the resources they have are obviously much greater than ours.
“But we know ourselves that we can go there and compete, and we take confidence from some of our other performances at the likes of Ibrox and Easter Road.
“You can work on your tactics and your shape as much as you want, it’s about how you handle it on the day. We’ll do what we can to go and win the game, and the important thing is that we go and put pressure on Celtic and try to make sure we don’t make it easy for them.
“We’ll be doing our best, but we realise that it’s Celtic we’re playing and we know that they will probably have chances and a lot of possession. We’ll need a bit of luck, but if we work hard and try our best to contain them then you never know.”
You often hear players or managers of smaller clubs talking about keeping it tight in the early stages when they visit the likes of Celtic Park, and while Morton will have a similar aim, O’Ware knows from experience there are different ways to achieve a result at such daunting venues.
“Going to these places you can say you’ll be trying to keep the back door shut early on, but at Ibrox we conceded within 50 seconds,” he said.
“We still managed to get a result though. In the Hibs game as well we rode our luck in the opening 10-15 minutes, so of course we’ll be trying to keep things tight early on, and if we are still in the game in the closing stages it will be good for us.
“We know that our team is good enough to take advantage if Celtic are having a bit of an off-day, and hopefully that’s the way it works out.”
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