BRECHIN BOSS Jim Duffy believes Elgin were worth their victory after they dumped City out of the Alba Challenge Cup at the first hurdle with a 3-1 win.

City went into the game as favourites against a team that finished bottom of division three last term, but a cracking goal for the hosts, courtesy or Jason Crooks after only 20 seconds, put Brechin on the back foot.

And despite equalising through Rory McAllister shortly after the break, Elgin fired in two more strikes midway through the half, through Craig Frizzel and Steven Edwards, to secure their passage into the next round.

A disappointed Duffy felt that Elgin were deserved winners over the course of the game, but was left to rue the early goal that set them on their way.

“I’m fairly disappointed,” the boss said.

“In any cup competition there are no guarantees you’ll win, but you do look for a performance and I feel we only played for about a third of the game.

“For about 20 or 30 minutes after we scored we played well, but that is not good enough.

“Over the whole piece Elgin deserved their victory.

“Of course, they made the perfect start. An early goal will have built their confidence and belief, and you then find you have to work extra hard to get back into the match.

“Losing that early goal was a setback, not in the sense that it was bad for our players, but in that it gave them a tremendous start.

“It was a good strike but it was easily avoidable, as I felt we gave the ball away.

“We responded better in the second half, though, and when it was 1-1 I felt we could go on to win it, but we switched off and lost two goals.

“We came through the match without any injuries, and our fitness wasn’t bad, but competitive match sharpness can take a couple of games to develop, and that’s where we fell down,” he added.