Sometimes, a team’s whole season can turn on one defining moment. For those of an Inverness persuasion, it felt as though they may have witnessed such a moment as they grasped an unlikely-looking draw from the jaws of defeat against Partick Thistle on Saturday with seconds left on the clock.
Gary Warren’s last-ditch header that rescued what could be such a vital point would have been reason enough to spark the wild celebrations that ensued, but for the Inverness players, it felt like something more. And if the league’s bottom side do manager to claw their way to safety come the end of May, they will likely look back on this afternoon in Maryhill as a defining moment in the tale of their survival.
“The equaliser felt like a big moment in the season, 100 per cent,” said recent recruit Louis Laing, himself no stranger to a relegation scrap, who was impressive alongside Warren and Jamie McCart in the Inverness back three.
“The gaffer reiterated that in his team talk. It is a massive point. They way that we did it, the spirit and the character.
“I have been involved in a few dog-fights before. My whole career seems to have been a dog-fight!
“I have been relegated before. When I was 17 or 18, I was at Wycombe Wanderers when they were in League One and went down that season.
“Am I bad luck charm? If you go back and look at my record, you could say that! But I don’t think that is going to happen here.
“The tables are turning here. Fingers crossed, luck will go for me this time. We will work hard and we all believe we can do it.”
It is Partick Thistle who came away from this game in the more comfortable confines of the top six, yet it was Alan Archibald’s men who trooped off dejectedly at the end of a game which they had dominated for the most part.
Inverness were actually the first to have the ball in the net as Henri Anier finished from the edge of the area in the first half, but the goal was disallowed as Billy McKay was adjudged to be hampering Tomas Cerny’s view from an offside position.
“I’m not sure where the referee has plucked that one from,” said Laing. “That was disheartening but the attitude and endeavour to get the goal back was always there.
“It is testament to the boys and the spirit we have in the changing room. There is not one person in there who doesn’t believe we are going to stay up.”
And yet it had looked for all the world that the disallowed goal would signal yet another dispiriting afternoon for Richie Foran’s men
Kris Doolan got the goal that Partick Thistle’s dominance deserved just before the hour, getting on the end of Ryan Edwards’s low cross to prod the ball home from six yards. It was his 99th for the club, and the only issue that looked still to be resolved as the match wore on was whether or not the forward would get the goal to bring up his century.
That was until the last-gasp intervention from Warren, who showed greater desire than the home defence to get on the end of Billy King’s looping ball to the back post to nod home.
"There was only five seconds left and it's cost us the win,” said Thistle’s goalscorer, Doolan. “It's sickening.
"The manager said after the game that he thought we'd got rid of that. It comes from a set-piece and a cross into the box, but we'd deal with that all day. It was one slip and we have paid the price.
"It wasn't a mental thing because I don't think Inverness really threatened us that much. We had dealt with the high balls and Tomas Cerny didn't have any difficult saves to make. It wasn't as if we was scrambling about making saves but it only takes a second to score and that's what happened.”
As deflated as the Thistle camp was after the match, they are still very much in pole position for that much-coveted top-half finish. And they have a chance to consolidate their sixth-place position in the table as they visit seventh-placed Kilmarnock next week
"The good thing is we didn't get beat,” Doolan said. “We have a point and maybe in past years we wouldn't have had. We are grinding out points but we need to build on it.
"Getting the win would have helped our position and we are all hurting. But we go to Kilmarnock looking for three points.”
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