The Ton boss memorably admitted that even a night out with Kylie Minogue couldn’t have picked him up after a shock Scottish Cup loss to non-league Spartans last season.

But the normally stoic Duffy said the anguish that accompanied Jason Thomson’s 94th-minute winner was the worst yet, as he felt his side had earned a massive point at a notoriously difficult venue.

He told the Tele: “We deserved a point, there’s no question about that, and it’s cruel. It’s hard to put into words just now how you feel.

“I feel deflated, shell-shocked, hurting — any adjectives you can use. It’s probably the worst feeling I’ve had since I’ve been here.

“I don’t really want to speak to anybody, see anybody … I just feel as if I’ve been punched in the solar plexus, the stuffing knocked right out of me.

“We’ve had poor games and we’ve made mistakes, but that to me was a sickener. I’m absolutely gutted and I’m gutted for the players because we put so much into the game.

“And I’m gutted for the supporters because they saw their team give everything and not really got the rewards for their efforts.

“We knew how Raith would play and we coped very well with it through the game. But [we conceded] in the dying seconds again, and that’s something that’s came to haunt us in a few games.

“We emphasised at half-time that if we got back into it to really stay focused and concentrate, and we know [Rory] McKeown has a long throw in.

“It’s a difficult one to defend because it can come off your own players, it can come off their players, it can loop up in the air, and people are wondering if they should go and attack it.” “You’ve not really got time to adjust in those situations other than hope that it lands for one of your players, and most of the time we handled that well.

“Obviously from Raith’s point of view they capitalised in the last seconds and went away with the spoils.” Despite feeling his side deserved to walk away with a point, Duffy says they have to cope better at set-pieces, with the Raith goals coming from a corner and then a long throw.

He added: “I said to the players in there at full-time that I didn’t know whether to praise them or criticise them. They deserved praise for their continued commitment, work ethic and desire, but there were elements in the game were they should have done better.

“We’ve not been cut open, we’ve not been outplayed – it’s a corner kick and a long throw we’ve conceded from and from my point of view that’s what’s frustrating.

“At the first goal, the players were saying it was a free-kick leading up to the header for the corner, but we should have done better at the second ball.

“It was the same at the long throw. We know that it’s going in [the box] and we know where it’s going to go, and we should have condensed that area better and picked up the second ball. I mean, Raith scored from a [Rory] McKeown long throw against St Mirren a couple of weeks ago so it’s not a surprise “I felt we just switched off for a split second in those areas and that was the difference between coming away with a point and losing. Raith have got a bit of belief and a bit of confidence because of their results. They know how to win games and go into them thinking that even if they’re not playing great they can still win it.

“Whereas we maybe have that wee bit of negative thought, thinking we’re 1-1 and we don’t want to lose it because it’s happened to us a couple of times this season.

“It happened down at Queen of the South - with a goal on half-time and near the end - it happened against Motherwell with the last kick of the ball and it’s happened again today. The bottom line is we should deal with that last goal. We know where it was going, we’ve got enough bodies in the box.

“Somebody has got to take authority there and deal with it, but I felt they were all kind of looking for someone else to deal with it rather than someone really taking control themselves. So as much as we can praise the players for the way they played and the effort they put in, it was a sickener to lose the goal in the manner we did.” The goal came in the fourth of five and a half minutes of stoppage time, but Duffy had no complaints about the amount of time added on. He said: “We never slowed the game down or wasted time but there were a couple of injuries. And listen, it doesn’t matter; you play to the final whistle whenever that comes. This will stay with us for a few days I’m sure. It will certainly stay with us over the weekend and linger into the early part of next week.

“But we have to try and shrug it aside because we have another tough match away to Queen of the South.”