JIM Duffy was adamant Morton deserved no less than a point from Friday’s Renfrewshire derby — and that he could not have faulted his side even if they hadn’t scored their late leveller.

Ton bossed the majority of the second half against a sorry St Mirren side after falling behind to a Jack Baird header on 11 minutes.

It looked as though their luck was out until super sub Alex Samuel turned home a last-minute equaliser to take a share of the spoils.

Duffy felt it would have been a travesty had the Greenock men walked away with nothing to show for a dominant second-half performance.

He told the Tele: “I think even people in the St Mirren camp would realise that over the 90 minutes we deserved at least a point.

“The first half was fairly even. St Mirren, once they scored, had a bit of momentum for about 10 minutes or so, which was understandable because it came from a succession of mistakes. A mistake leading up to the corner — a bit of indecision — and then an error leading up to the goal. I think that kind of deflated us for 10 minutes.

“But we regrouped and then towards the end of the first half and the whole of the second half, we were the team on the front foot and the team in control.

“Whether it was the 45th minute or the 90th minute I’m just happy to get one because I think that was the least we deserved.

“We probably did deserve to [win] … if there was one team that was looking to in the game, it was us.

“Obviously, I can understand it from St Mirren’s point of view, because we’ve been there in a couple of games when you get 1-0 up and you just want to hold onto it sometimes.

“We did it against Alloa and Livingston recently, when it got a bit nervy and erratic but we managed to hold on. But from our point of view, if we could have scored earlier [on Friday] I think we were certainly the team that looked the most likely.”

“The point just keeps the momentum, keeps the optimism. If we had lost the game 1-0 I would have been disappointed with the result but I couldn’t have complained about the performance.

“Coming here and playing the way we played, even if we had lost 1-0 I would still have been really happy with the players.

“If you score late on away to your rivals [you enjoy it], and I think we came here and showed a lot of courage with the way we played.

“We went with a real positive side, started off with two wingers and then changed it to two out-and-out strikers.

I think we gave it a go and it was a decent game. Grant had a magnificent save from the boy [Stephen] Mallan’s free-kick in the first half, and Jamie Langfield made two or three great saves again.

“So overall there were one or two scary moments in either goal, but in general play I think we did well and deserved a draw.”

The Ton boss originally set his side out in a 4-4-1-1 formation with Ross Forbes playing off Denny Johnstone.

But he tweaked his system at half-time, moving Forbes onto the right flank, Bobby Barr over to the left and Stefan McCuskey up through the middle. When asked for his thinking, Duffy explained:

“Ross started in the number 10 role. We obviously worked on it in training and it started off alright in the first 10 or 15 minutes.

“Because it is such a wide pitch we felt as if we needed a bit of width and pace on the flanks and went with Bobby [Barr] and Stef wide.

“And with St Mirren having such a big, strong back four we just felt that Ross in that little pocket would maybe draw one of the centre-backs out and leave space for Denny and Bobby in behind.

“At times we got into that space that was created - the two penalty incidents for example - so there were two or three moments in the first half where it did work.

“But I felt that Denny was getting a bit isolated. He was running into the inside-right and inside-left channels, pretty much running across the whole frontline rather than just staying central.

“So we decided to just change it back round again and put Stef alongside him, and in terms of the second half, Ross was getting on the ball, coming in off the right and getting shots at goal.

“The link up play was better … so it was better in the second half. There were a lot of good things about our play, the back four was excellent again - it was a good team performance.”

Morton appeared to have two legitimate penalty calls turned down in the first half, with both McCluskey and Ross Forbes seemingly clipped inside the box. Duffy hadn’t seen the incidents again when interviewed post-match but could confirm McCluskey was certain he was fouled.

He added: “I’ve not seen it; I really haven’t. Stef said he was taken out, and if we could have scored then, aye, of course there was a whole different aspect to the game.

“With Ross’s, Stef has already been booked for diving so players think: ‘Unless, I really get clattered … ’ It does look as if he got clipped but I haven’t seen it again, so I can’t really say.”