Johnstone Burgh co-manager David Brolly took the positives from their 0-0 draw against Vale of Leven on Saturday in the Sectional League Cup.

Burgh missed two penalties in the second half, and the boss put it down to one of those days at the office.

Despite the result, Brolly took positives from their second half performance and improvement from their pre-season displays.

He said: “We didn’t have the best of pre-season games, and the results never went our way, so as I said to the team on Saturday the competitive games are on now and we want to get off to a winning start.  “They’re a division below us, and I thought we were capable of getting the three points but obviously it didn’t pan out that way.

“We missed two penalties. Everybody can miss a penalty but missing two of them you know luck’s not with you.

“But you’ve got to take it on the chin.

“It was a wee bit of an improvement from the pre-season games.

“We just never had the cutting edge to get a goal that would have won us the game.

“I was happier with the performance than I have been in the last few weeks. It was an improvement so it gives us something to build on.”

And while a number of other clubs use the Sectional League Cup as an extended pre-season for their players, Brolly insisted they were taking it seriously themselves, and the competitive season was under way.

He added: “I know a lot of managers use the cup as an extended pre-season but we said to the players that wasn’t the case.

“We’ve not qualified from this section for a good few years and that was something I wanted to try and do this year.

“Drawing on Saturday makes it a wee bit tougher but we’re in it.

“I thought in the first half our play was too deep.

“I said at half-time if we could play further up the park, play some one-twos in and around their centre-backs and get behind them that way as they were big and strong, they weren’t getting headers over them.

“So we had to change it second half and it seemed to work, we had several chances and the two penalties and I think the keeper had another couple of good saves.

“On another day I think we would have won it 4-0 or 4-1.

“They had a couple of chances as well but the way it’s panned out it’s ended up 0-0 but it was an improvement and there was encouragement.”

Johnstone Burgh are away next to Port Glasgow tonight (kick-off 7pm), with a bye on Saturday, and Brolly says his players need to be sharper.

He said: “It will be a tougher game so we need to be a bit better and have a bit more of a cutting edge.

“We need to look to put away one or two of the chances that we created on Saturday, put them in the net and start scoring some goals.”

Burgh will then face Greenock Juniors on Wednesday, August 17 and host Renfrew on Saturday, August 20.