St Mirren boss Goodwin bemoans Brophy injury and late goal blow

St Mirren manager Jim Goodwin was left counting the cost of a double blow after losing Eamonn Brophy to injury and conceding a stoppage-time equaliser against Motherwell.

Brophy went off with ankle ligament damage midway through the first half and his replacement, Alex Gogic, headed home a debut goal in the 81st minute, 24 hours after moving on loan from Hibernian.

But Ross Tierney finished high into the net after Kaiyne Woolery dispossessed Richard Tait deep in the Saints half.

Goodwin said: “It’s obviously a bitter blow to lose that goal in the manner we did. It was poor defending, although it was a good finish.

“It would have been daylight robbery if we took three points on the night. Both teams were poor offensively.

“There was no free-flowing football over the 90 minutes and Motherwell dragged us into a bit of a dogfight.

“We have to roll our sleeves up to grind out a result, but those two points are a bit of a sickener right now when you think about how the table would have looked after the other results went our way.

“We would be a point behind Aberdeen and Dundee United with a chance to go level with Hibs at the weekend.”

On Brophy, Goodwin said: “Eamonn is not looking great at the moment. We’ll wait for it to settle down and get it scanned.

“It’s a bitter blow obviously as Eamonn is our top goalscorer. We’re going to have to cross our fingers and hope for the best, but the initial diagnosis isn’t great.

“He’s going to be a big miss, hopefully not for too long.

“We’ve got too many on the injury bed at the minute. Curtis Main and Scott Tanser are probably still a couple of weeks away and we’re missing big players.”

Motherwell manager Graham Alexander was frustrated that his side did not claim all three points.

“It would have been a travesty if we lost that game,” he said. “We dominated St Mirren and had numerous chances and double their attempts on goal and on target.

“To find ourselves 1-0 down with 10 minutes to go was a painful one but the players showed brilliant commitment and courage and went to the end and deservedly got at least an equaliser.

“The players got half their rewards, I thought they deserved to win the game.”

Alexander was delighted to see Tierney grab his first goal since his transfer from Bohemians.

“We know he’s got the intelligence to pick up good positions and it was a great finish right in front of our fans, who were magnificent,” he said. “Even when we went 1-0 down they were still with us and brought us towards that goal.”