Gary Irvine admitted to a sense of deja vu after Dundee let Ross County off the hook for the second week on the trot.
The Dark Blues rescued a point from a rugged encounter at Palmerston Park thanks to Matt Lockwood’s last-ditch cracker after Sam Parkin had put the Doonhamers ahead, but there were few celebrations in the visiting camp as Barry Smith’s men again failed to close the gap on the leaders, who were held by Ayr.
Irvine said: ”We feel we’ve missed out on two points and it’s hard to take. That’s two weeks in a row the same thing has happened now and, to be honest, we haven’t played well enough either time.
”Our first-half performance definitely wasn’t good enough and when they scored it gave us a massive uphill battle because it’s hard enough coming here.”
Irvine started in the midfield berth vacated by Gavin Rae last month, but ended in his more familiar wingback role after a head injury to Neil McGregor forced a reshuffle.
Rhys Weston and Jake Hyde also sustained head knocks after colliding with each other, the former leaving the field with a suspected broken nose.
The incidents were typical of a bruising affair in which both sides struggled to play flowing football on a heavy Palmerston pitch.
As a member of the St Johnstone team that went on a promotion-winning run three seasons ago, Irvine fears County have the same sort of momentum now.
He said: ”They have put themselves in a great position and they have a great squad. All the teams below can do is keep grinding away and hopefully we can catch up with them.”
They will get another chance to close the gap on Tuesday night when they face Falkirk in a potentially crucial clash at Westfield.
Manager Smith said: ”The boys worked extremely hard to get back into it. We didn’t play as well as we can but a lot of that is down to how well Queens played and they deserve credit for that.
”But the character of my players has never been in question and I thought our attitude was spot-on.
”Even when we got the late equaliser we were throwing bodies forward in the hope of winning it because we wanted three points.”
He added: ”It was a hard game and we have a few boys with various knocks and cuts but hopefully most of them should be okay for Tuesday.”