DETERMINED Morton Women boss Gary Forbes has challenged his side to go and make a statement against Dryburgh Athletic this weekend as he looks to put a disappointing defeat at Stirling Uni behind him.

Ton were on the wrong end of a heavy defeat to the Uniersity side who found themselves 3-0 up within 20 minutes in a poor opening period for the Parklea side.

Ton are back on the road again though this weekend as they make the trip to the City of Discovery to play Dundee-based Dryburgh Athletic.

And Forbes wants to try and put last week's heay defeat behind them in style by putting in a statement performance against an established top six side in the Scottish Women's third tier.

But he says they'll need to tick off an extensive checklist if they're to do that as they prepare for another long trip on the road.

He told the Tele: "It’ll be a tough task and another decent trip to go to Dundee, so we'll prepare ourselves well and use our time wisely before the game.

"But we know how tough it'll be because Dryburgh are a very well established side having won trophies in the past few seasons.

"This week though, we've spoken as a group of needing a statement performance. We’ve been competing with the teams around us but we need a big performance against someone regarded as a top half team.

"We need to compete and get that level of performance in, but we need to then go and push on to go and go and get a result

"I feel like we had prepared quite well in the build up to the Stirling University game, but the result was tough to take.

"The performance that we put in within the first 20-minutes was nowhere near where we wanted to be and we found ourselves 3-0 down

"Our second half was decent, we were more competitive and in the game but the damage was done and we couldn’t get back in the game."

Forbes' disappointment stems from the lack of consistency shown by his side but he's looking forward to getting back on the road this weekend.

Ton seem to have favoured being away from home recently, but the Parklea supremo isn't reading into that too much just yet as his side still adjust to the Port Glasgow pitch.

He added: "Looking back, it's disappointing in terms of the consistency in how we played and then the manner of how we got beat.

"Our away form bearing more fruit is probably just down to playing more away games, we're not really reading too into it.

"We've not had too many games at home, we've only had two at Parklea, with the Cappielow game outwith that, but we’re not too concerned about it because the performances have been ok."