Dundee may not have made up any ground on league leaders Ross County on Saturday but they still left a wintry Victoria Park with a spring in their step.
You could make a case for it being a good, bad or indifferent day for the Dark Blues, who conceded late on to a lucky goal from former striker Colin McMenamin to draw 1-1 with the Highlanders.
Steven Milne had given the visitors a deserved lead after 35 minutes but the celebrations among the big travelling support had hardly died down before midfielder Stephen O’Donnell was given a straight red card for a challenge on County’s Iain Vigurs two minutes later.
Your initial thought was that the offence merited a booking but the way in which referee George Salmond raced over to the scene of the ”crime” quickly told you that Dundee would be losing their second man in successive weeks following winger Nicky Riley’s early exit against Queen of the South.
Until then the Dark Blues had looked the superior side, with their opponents enjoying plenty of possession but never really testing goalie Rab Douglas.
Even after O’Donnell’s departure, they looked likely to hang on for a win that would have blown the promotion race wide open.
However, fortune favoured the Staggies when, with only eight minutes left on the clock, a poorly-hit Vigurs shot from 25 yards’ out fell to McMenamin and he found a way past Douglas even though the big man got something on the ball.
Douglas was to be the hero just minutes later, sticking out a leg to block a goalbound header from Scott Boyd.
A draw at Dingwall can never really be regarded as failure but it was frustrating for Dundee to come so close to a seventh straight success.
Defender Matt Lockwood, who after giving his views on the game had to run to catch the team bus after it drove off without him, summed up the feeling of being so near and yet so far.
”We are disappointed because even when we went down to 10 men we fancied ourselves to keep a clean sheet,” said Lockwood.
”They resorted to going with four up players up front and were going a bit long ball. That was playing into our hands, I thought. They seemed to be running out of ideas and we were happy to let them have the ball and were fairly comfotable.
”The way the goal came about, therefore, was a blow because it was a shot that ricocheted and just dropped to the boy’s feet. It was a lucky goal rather than a good one. Had we been opened up by a great bit of play then you could hold your hands up and say, ‘Good goal, fair enough.’
”I thought before the sending-off that we were the better team. I think everyone in the stadium would have agreed with that.
”We were comfortable, were passing the ball about and had scored a good goal ourselves. Still, to come here and get a point isn’t a bad result.
”So we have to take the positives out of it. At 11 versus 11 away to the top side in the division we were the better team.”
Lockwood conceded, though, that Dundee will need help if they are to get peg back the Staggies.
”They are a long way ahead of us in the table and have a game in hand (away to Ayr United) and we need to rely on other people to take points off them,” he said.
”The gap still stays the same when had we hung on it would have been down to five so that’s disappointing. But all we can do is focus on ourselves and at the moment we are doing not too badly.”
Lockwood thinks it won’t be easy for Derek Adams’ men to maintain their commanding lead with everyone else in the division trying to shoot them down.
”It will be tough for County to stay out in front,” he said. ”If Rangers or Celtic were well clear in the SPL you would think they would be too good to be caught.
”I don’t think they are that much better than the other teams to enable them to keep on winning.”
Dundee boss Barry Smith was rightly proud of his players for a performance that showed just how far they have come since they languished at the bottom of the league.
He and County manager Derek Adams, however, agreed to disagree over whether O’Donnell should have gone.
”It was not a red card,” said Smith. ”The problem was that the referee and his linesman saw two different things so who do you believe?
”Referees have got difficult jobs but the major decisions are not (going) for us at this moment in time.”
Adams countered: ”The red card was a stone-waller. You just can’t go over the ball with your studs showing and get away with it. It’s a straight red card and I don’t know what Dundee are complaining about.”