AS Morton entered the final minute of Saturday’s home fixture with relegation-threatened Ayr United, it looked as though the wheels had come off their title challenge.

They were trailing 1-0 to a sublime Jon-Paul McGovern free-kick and seemingly destined for their third successive reverse.

Elsewhere, winger Willie Gibson’s 83rd minute winner for Stranraer against Airdrie left the Ton looking at a four-point deficit at the top of the table.

With just six games remaining, Jim Duffy’s men would have slumped to their worst run of results this term at a critical stage of the season.

They needed a miracle — and they got one.

Within the space of three minutes, Declan McManus and Ross Forbes struck twice at the death to spectacularly snatch all three points from under the Honest Men’s noses.

Absolute unbridled ecstasy had replaced angst and anguish as the Ton reaffixed those aforementioned wheels and set them in motion again all in the blink of an eye.

It almost goes without saying that staying there will require a significant improvement on recent performances in the final half dozen League One fixtures.

In last week’s loss at Airdrie, two Ton mistakes were ruthlessly punished, one of which came after Lee Kilday was robbed of possession.

Fellow full-back Mark Russell, who turned 19 yesterday, almost suffered a similar fate within the first five minutes on Saturday after losing the ball, albeit in a more advanced position.

After cutting out the teenager’s pass, Brian Gilmour clipped an angled pass over the top for Jordan Preston to chase.

The Blackburn Rovers loanee cut inside Thomas O’Ware as the retreating Ton defender attempted to read his movement, but saw his right-footed drive comfortably beaten down by Derek Gaston.

In response to the Diamonds’ defeat, Ton boss Duffy made two changes to the starting line-up, replacing Stefan Milojevic and Stefan McCluskey with Jamie McCluskey and Ross Caldwell.

It facilitated an attack-minded approach, with McCluskey and Declan McManus deployed on the flanks in what made the starting 4-4-2 formation more of a 4-2-4 at times.

And McCluskey was behind Ton’s response to Preston’s early chance, working a sharp exchange with Forbes before curling a left-footed effort over the top on seven minutes.

On 10 minutes, he popped up on the left flank, threw a trademark stepover and 180-degree swivel combination to turn back on himself and simultaneously create a yard of space.

But, in a moment that summed the hosts up in recent weeks, his teasing inswinging delivery found no takers as it flashed just wide of the upright.

The Honest Men were causing problems though and Robbie Crawford passed up two promising openings in quick succession, firing down Gaston’s throat before heading harmlessly over the top.

It was around the 20-minute mark that Morton began to fully assert themselves and take control of proceedings.

Forbes offered a preview of his last-gasp heroics on 23 minutes when he expertly weaved his way through three challenges to open up space for a shot at goal.

On this occasion though the playmaker lacked composure at the vital moment as he slashed a right-footed shot high over the bar from the edge of the box.

Right-back Kilday was then presented with an opportunity to purge the memory of last week’s blunder on 26 minutes.

After bursting forward and slipping Michael Miller in down the outside, he continued his run into the box.

The return pass came but Kilday betrayed his status as a defender by freezing after finding himself in nosebleed territory by stabbing weakly at David Hutton from six yards. Former Ton stopper Hutton parried straight back against Kilday’s chest, and in another goalmouth incident that encapsulated the Ton’s recent fortunes, the ball bobbled an inch wide of the upright.

If that wasn’t enough to leave the hosts cursing their luck, O’Ware’s powerful downwards header from a Forbes corner was then inadvertently blocked on the line by team-mate Caldwell.

The hitman’s thrust and powerful running was key to his side’s next attempt as he gobbled up the ground on the counter-attack.

Eschewing a shooting chance of his own, Caldwell rolled back into the path of Forbes who was still in the process of finding his range as he fired another sighter into the Sinclair Street terracing.

Forbes is proving an inspired transfer window acquisition, and he was more often than not the conduit through which his side’s best attacking play was channelled.

On 44 minutes he worked a quick free-kick with McCluskey on the right before fizzing a dangerous angled delivery into the six-yard box.

Like McCluskey’s cross from the opposite side half an hour earlier, no one had gambled and the ball zipped past the post. Ton had grown into the half and by the end it was one-way traffic. Yet, crucially, Hutton had little in the way of real saves to make.

He was forced into action right on the cusp of the interval but Michael Miller’s low strike lacked power and direction and it proved another routine stop for the Ayr custodian.

Another chance went begging six minutes after the restart when McManus found Kilday arriving on the opposite side with a pull-back from the left.

The full-back controlled but delayed his shot a fraction of a second too long, allowing the visitors to close him down before he could properly pull the trigger.

And Ton’s failure to turn supremacy into something tangible was ruthlessly punished when they fell behind on 53 minutes after O’Ware conceded a soft free-kick on the edge of the box.

Somerset Park skipper McGovern stepped up and sent an unstoppable free-kick over the wall and into the net via the underside of the crossbar.

The goal unnerved an inexperienced Ton team, who completely surrendered the initiative to the visitors for the next 25 minutes. And they had goalkeeper Derek Gaston to thank for keeping them in the game with a hat-trick of stops, one of which could prove season-defining.

The 27-year-old scrambled to his right to keep out Crawford’s low drive on 59 minutes and then showed safe hands to clutch left wing-back’s Michael Donald’s stinging strike from distance.

But it was the save to deny Crawford on 69 minutes that has rightfully earned him the acclaim of colleagues and supporters.

When Craig Murray slipped the Ayr No8 in on goal with a simple slide-rule pass that opened up the Ton defence far too easily, the immediate thought from everyone in the ground was ‘game over’.

Everyone except Gaston, who plunged down to his left to push the placed shot clear and resuscitate his side’s hopes of salvaging something from the match. The save had a surreal air about it, as though the shot-stopper had altered what was actually supposed to happen.

It provided Ton with a boost and they came back into the game in the final 10 minutes – but their attempts to score were much the same as in the first 45, with half-chances going unconverted and unconvincing efforts failing to test Hutton.

When news filtered through that table toppers Stranraer had taken the lead against Airdrie with just seven minutes remaining, it seemed certain to be a disastrous afternoon.

However, Duffy’s men then staged a miraculous, Houdini-like escape in the closing stages inspired by former Motherwell man Forbes.

It was from his teasing free-kick that McManus eventually nodded into the net to level things up after Lamie had done incredibly well to direct back towards goal.

The goal was officially timed at 89:59 by Opta, and even though there was just one second left when the ball crossed the line, Ayr’s timewasting offered a slim hope there would be enough time for a winner.

And so it proved when in the second minute of stoppage time, Forbes accepted a clever McManus flick inside, waltzed inside and bent a low shot beyond Hutton into the bottom-left corner. The strike sparked bedlam inside Cappielow as Ton snatched an incredibly important victory from the jaws of defeat in scarcely believable fashion. Although the nature of much of the second-half performance could give cause for concern, it is important to enjoy Saturday for what it was as days like those don’t come around too often.

And the hope must be that the elation that accompanied such a dramatic victory can be the spark that helps steady the Greenock outfit’s course again as they head into the home straight.