JIM Duffy feels that his match day Ton squads will need to be brimming with experience if they plan to have a successful end to the campaign.

Tuesday night’s game in Livingston was the first time in several weeks that Duffy has named a full allocation of seven substitutes.

In recent weeks he has only listed six named subs, which has illustrated just how wafer-thin his squad is.

Injuries to the likes of Jamie McGowan, Robert Thomson, Jai Quitongo, Ross Forbes, Luca Gasparotto and Jack Iredale, have stretched his squad to the limit.

Thankfully some of his stars, such as Iredale and Gasparotto are coming back to full fitness.

But Duffy knows that he’ll need as many experienced players as possible available to him if Ton are to end the season on a high.

He said: “You can always put young boys on the bench and we have done that at times. But it’s got to the stage in the season where experience counts and in an ideal world you’ll want a wee bit more experience in these situations.”

Meanwhile, Duffy has hailed Mark Russell for showing his versatility on Tuesday night.

The 21-year-old was deployed as a right-back and showed up well.

Duffy said: “Mark did well. Michael Doyle was suspended so we don’t have another natural right-back that can go in there and play so I thought he was excellent.

“But we had a lot of good performances and that’s the opposite of what we had on Saturday [against Falkirk].”

Meanwhile, Doyle should come back into the equation for Saturday’s trip to East End Park, having served his one-match suspension for going through the disciplinary points threshold.