Ryan Stevenson says that the Partick Thistle players are laughing off the incident at the weekend that saw a series of messages posted from his teammate Steven Lawless’s Twitter account, after the midfielder had his phone stolen on a night out.

Lawless had gone to see the World Series of Darts Finals at the Braehead Arena hours after helping his side defeat Inverness Caledonian Thistle 2-1 at Firhill.

During the course of the evening his phone was taken from him, and shortly afterwards a stream of expletive-laden messages were sent from his social media account that included jibes at his club, his teammate Declan McDaid, and also made light of the two-match ban that Lawless was handed by the SFA at the end of last season for gambling offences.

Stevenson said: “I didn’t even know until I came into training this morning! It’s slack on his part leaving his phone lying about and getting it taken off him.

“If it could happen to anyone it was always going to be him or maybe Banzo (Stuart Bannigan), so I’m just happy it wasn’t me!

“It’s probably his worst nightmare given the situation and what he’s gone through, but all you can really do is take it in good jest and enjoy it as a bit of banter.”

The first message to appear said: “Can’t wait to get out of this f****n s***e club at the end of the season, wee move to France will do me good. They’re going down.”

Then the hacker joked about Lawless’s gambling ban, tweeting “£500 on Tottenham the day. #easymoney #f***thesfa.”

The club acted swiftly to contact Lawless, who was still without his phone on Sunday morning, and managed to have the account password reset. Lawless immediately sent out an apology and explanation for the spurious tweets when he regained control of the account.

He said: “My phone was stolen last night and someone has accessed my account without my permission. I can only apologise for the things that were tweeted. They don’t reflect how I feel. I’m proud to be a Partick Thistle player and was delighted with the three points yesterday.”

Lawless had previously been carpeted by the club for tweeting about his desire to leave Firhill towards the end of last season during a spell out of the side, but he fought his way back into the team and signed a new deal in May that ties him to Partick Thistle until the end of the current campaign.

He has been a regular in Alan Archibald’s starting eleven so far this season.