IT was a day for milestones in the Firhill sunshine as Partick Thistle finally achieved the hitherto elusive feat of securing consecutive victories in the top flight of Scottish football.

Not since May 2004 had Thistle won back-to-back games and for 83 minutes it looked as if the wait would go on as both sides effectively cancelled each other out, restricting genuine scoring chances to a minimum.

However, a little bit of history was made when Steven Lawless fastened onto Lyle Taylor's flick and unleashed an unstoppable shot to give Partick a win they just about merited on the strength of a dominant second-half display.

There was a further milestone in the shape of Conrad Balatoni's 150th appearance in a Partick Thistle shirt and the former Hearts defender was almost as pleased with a consecutive clean sheet as with that much sought after victory.

"Finally we've got back-to-back wins so you can stop talking about that," said Balatoni. "It's great to get that off our backs. It's down to the boys and how hard we've worked over the last couple of weeks. We've had a good wee run going apart from the Ross County game.

"Now we can go into the Aberdeen game full of confidence and hopefully we can take something from that game."

On reaching his landmark appearance, Balatoni added: "I'm 24 years old so to get to 150 games is great. I just want to continue playing until the end of the season and however many appearances I make I'll be happy with.

"But it was topped off with a clean sheet and a victory for me personally. We always think that if we keep a clean sheet we'll get one chance to go and score. That was proved in this game as Inverness had a couple of chances to score in the first half.

"But I felt it was an even game. You know what you're going to get from Inverness, they are a good passing side but I felt we defended pretty well and limited their chances. We created a couple of chances ourselves and fortunately for us we took one of them."

Balatoni has endeared himself to the Jags support with his no-nonsense approach to defending though that was not always the case for a player who made his debut as a raw teenager five years ago.

"When you are young you go out on loan to learn, for new experiences and you make mistakes. For me it was like that and I learned the hard way.

"I think, hopefully, in the promotion season I changed a few peoples' minds about myself. If people still don't rate me then I've just got to keep playing the way I do.

"Sometimes fans don't take a fancy to you, that's part of football. It's all about opinions at the end of the day. But hopefully now they rate me as one of the better players in this team."

Balatoni was certainly one of the stars of a miserly home defence who restricted Caley to few chances.

The Highlanders, though, did have the better of the first half and would have led but for Scott Fox's reflex save from Ryan Christie's glancing header.

Partick responded with a James Craigen shot that was turned round a post by Ryan Esson before the Maryhill men asserted themselves as the match progressed.

Esson kept them at bay again with a fingertip save from Ryan Stevenson's fierce free kick but the Caley keeper was finally beaten by that late strike from Lawless.

"We've already had more wins and clean sheets this season than the whole of last season and we're delighted with that," said home manager Alan Archibald.

While disappointed with a missed opportunity to consolidate third place in the table, John Hughes, the Inverness manager, remained upbeat.

He said: "As a manager I don't mind getting beat if we play properly but we never did that in the second half and credit to Partick - they got on the front foot. But in everything we've done this season the boys have been fantastic so we'll just get back to work and come back from this."