JOE CARDLE couldn’t hide his frustration in the aftermath of Partick Thistle’s 2-2 draw with Falkirk on Saturday after watching the Jags throw points away at the death for the second week in a row.

A freak goal from Calumn Morrison gave the visitors the lead in Glasgow’s west end early on before goals from Brian Graham and Cardle in quick succession swung the momentum in the hosts’ favour.

Ian McCall’s men looked like they would hold on to see out the victory and claim a precious three points, only for Charlie Telfer to strike shortly before full-time to ensure a share of the spoils at Firhill.

It’s the second time in a week that a late goal against has harmed Thistle’s points tally and the Jags are now eight points behind Cove Rangers in the race for the title just four games into the campaign.

“I’ve not seen the table yet but we know ourselves that points-wise, we haven’t been anywhere near good enough,” Cardle admitted. “That’s a frustrating factor.

“Even last week [when Thistle lost 1-0 to Cove after conceding a stoppage-time goal] if we ride it out we get a draw. We should have four points in our last two games and instead we’ve got one point.

“For me, it’s hard to take but we need to dust ourselves down. There’s no point dwelling on it.

“We played some good football today. We need to look at the positives, look at the next five games and hopefully get some points on the board to get ourselves back up there.”

Morrison’s goal, Cardle admits, was a particularly sore one to take. It was a moment of madness that in some ways encapsulated much of the past three seasons at Firhill – a cruel slice of misfortune that ultimately cost them points on the board.

McCall was adamant during his post-match interview that even putting the fortuitous nature of the goal to one side – Morrison and James Penrice both lunged for the ball simultaneously, resulting in it ricocheting off the pair of them and looping over Kieran Wright and into the back of the net – the Falkirk winger was in an offside position to begin with.

The Thistle boss at pains to offer his sympathies to the officials as he understands the challenging environment they work in – “I make ten mistakes a game” – but Cardle felt Falkirk’s opening goal on Saturday was simply the next iteration of a recurring theme of the Jags’ recent campaigns: they just can’t seem to ever get the rub of the green. Yet, at the same time, they created enough chances that they should have been able to bury the game nonetheless.

“You couldn’t really write it,” Cardle said. “I don’t know how goals like that always seem to go in against us.

“Even the one at the end, if we just ride it out for the next couple of minutes then the game is done and we’ve won. It’s frustrating. We need to look at it.

“If we’re playing good stuff and we manage to score two goals in quick succession like that, we should go on and finish teams off. With the players that we’ve got and the strike force that we’ve got, we should be scoring more goals so that the game is out of sight but unfortunately we haven’t done that.”

He continued: “It’s disappointing. After the second goal we should have killed them off. The way the game was going, I thought we controlled the majority of the football and it’s frustrating to leave with a draw because we played some good stuff.

"I felt after we scored the second goal we sat back and invited pressure and then they get the goal in the last few minutes which is a gutter. It feels like we’ve lost the game to be honest.”

That late equaliser from the visitors may have felt like a kick in the gut - or, as McCall suggested, "the you-know-whats" - for the players but Cardle himself can take some solace from his excellent display against Falkirk.

The 33-year-old vowed at the start of the season to add more goals and assists to his game this term and he did just that on Saturday, grabbing a second-half leveller before teeing up Graham minutes later to nudge the hosts ahead.

Cardle says he is pleased to be adding more numbers to his creative output this season but pointed out that he has done so throughout his career – and added that his relationship with full-back Ryan Williamson, who he played alongside at Dunfermline, is starting to bear fruit down Thistle’s right flank.

“This is what I’ve done for the majority of my career,” Cardle said of his eye-catching performance. “I’ve always scored and assisted goals.

“That’s my position and the manager expects that of me. It was good to get a goal and good to get an assist but the massive thing we want is three points and we didn’t get that. It’s put a real dampener on a good day really.”

He continued: “I’ve played with Ryan for years now. I played with him at Dunfermline as well and we link up pretty well.

“I’ve never really played on the right-hand side – for the majority of my career I’ve always played on the left – but I’m enjoying it on the right. I can cut inside and put balls in the box. It’s good when you’ve got an out ball like Williamson that you can play one-twos with.”

Telfer, meanwhile, was delighted to grab a last-gasp equaliser – and added that as last season showed (when Falkirk were pipped to the League One title by Raith Rovers by a single point), every point accrued could prove vital come the end of the campaign.

“It could be [a big moment],” he said. “As we’ve said in there, it’s such a short season and every point can be important. We found that out last season.

“Every point counts, so although there’s frustration that we didn’t get three, we’ll maybe look back at the end of the season and see it as a big point.” 

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