Dundee boss McPake happy despite Raith fright

Dundee boss James McPake expressed his delight after his side progressed to the Premiership play-off final despite losing to Raith Rovers at Dens Park.

The Dark Blues had won the first leg of the semi-final 3-0 on Wednesday at Stark’s Park to give Raith a mountain to climb.

Rovers rose to the challenge, taking the lead through Lewis Vaughan, but just could not find more goals with Dundee now set to play either Kilmarnock or Ross County in the final, unless Hamilton perform a football miracle by beating the Ayrshire side by nine goals.

McPake said: “I would have been fuming if we hadn’t got through.

“Raith were good. They came and gave us a bit of a fright but if someone said you’ll lose one and win one and get through to the final I’d have taken it.

“It did mean a lot because we were so desperate to get back into the Premiership.

“It wasn’t our best performance but it didn’t need to be. We just needed to find a way to get through the tie. The tie effectively was won on Wednesday.

“We just had to do our job properly. We wanted to go unbeaten but it’s irrelevant because we’re in the final and we’ll be watching who we could potentially play on Thursday.”

McPake added: “We knew they were going to come and throw everything at it.

“Over the two legs we were the better team and I thought we maybe had the better of the chances. This part of the job is done.”

Raith boss John McGlynn was also full of praise for his players who have punched above their weight all season after coming up from League One.

He said: “We went for it, got a great start and put pressure on them. We were 3-0 down and had to go for it.

“We had to be direct, made them panic and got the goal back.

“We had to score first and there was a lot of time left for a second.

“I look back at the goal we didn’t get in the first game and if we had got that it would have been 3-2 and Dundee panicking even more than they did.

“We fell that bit short getting that second goal. Getting it would have given us a massive boost. There were a couple of penalty claims there.

“I’m proud of the players, they’ve delivered some tremendous performances, scored great goals and had a lot of plaudits which pleases me.”