IF St Mirren felt they had been out of luck a fortnight earlier when their game against Ross County was abandoned with the Paisley side two goals to the good, then fortune certainly favoured them in the rearranged match yesterday.

Leading 2-1 and up against nine men as play drifted into injury time, County launched one last attack in the hope of chiselling out an unlikely equaliser. Attempting to clear the danger, Jim Goodwin seemed to play the ball with his arm in the corner of the penalty box as Brian McLean was preparing to shoot but the referee, Willie Collum, took no action, while his assistant Charlie Smith, who was directly in line with the incident, also felt nothing untoward had taken place.

Goodwin had survived a similar penalty claim against Partick Thistle in St Mirren's previous game, the Irishman either under the impression that the Any Man Save rule has been introduced to senior football or is someone upon whom the Gods are currently smiling.

Derek Adams, the stunned Ross County manager, felt it was the latter, and his fairly scathing comments about the St Mirren captain are likely to land him in a spot of bother with Vincent Lunny, the Scottish Football Associ­ation's compliance officer.

"Jim Goodwin wasn't playing today, was he?" Adams began cryptically before expanding. "Seven or eight fouls and [he] never got a booking. He handled the ball last week, and he handled the ball this week. So I don't think he plays football any more. The referees don't actually see Jim Goodwin. That must be a great thing as how he got through the game without being booked is actually terrible. He walks about the park, kicks lumps out of people and fouls and nothing happens.

"I know the observers have looked at it, I've spoken to them after the game. They've noted it down. They couldn't believe it wasn't a penalty and that Jim Goodwin wasn't booked. I don't want to get players booked but he deserved to be booked. In the first game he went through Melvin de Leeuw a few times and nothing happened and today . . . well, he's like a ghost."

Adams also suggested that the scoreline at the time of the abandoned match may have played a part in the decision not to award his team that late penalty. "We were losing 2-0 here the last time; does that go through their [the match officials'] minds? We were 2-1 down, we were down to nine men, we get a penalty and make it 2-2: the whole of Paisley would have gone mental."

Danny Lennon, the St Mirren manager, chose not to rise to the bait. "Derek will have his own opinions and any other manager should concentrate on their own side and nothing more," he said. "Jim is competitive; it is in his make-up. But I have no other comment on what was said."

County, who have yet to win away from home this season, were undone by bad luck but also their own indiscipline. Having given themselves a lifeline when Steven Saunders reduced the deficit to 2-1 with 25 minutes still to play, they then suffered setbacks when first Ivan Sproule and then Saunders were sent off within five minutes of each other.

Almost forgotten amid the controversy over the non-penalty award was the fact that St Mirren had racked up another win. From a team apparently destined to be involved in a battle to avoid relegation little more than a month ago, Lennon's side are now one of the form sides in the division. This victory, courtesy of goals from Steven Thompson and Conor Newton, was their fourth in their last five games and lifted them above Thistle into eighth place in the SPFL Premiership table, much to Lennon's delight. "We are getting the rewards for our hard work and discipline and we managed to jump another place in the league," he added. "It is another step in the right direction."

A steady smirr fell throughout the match but, mercifully, there was little sign of the rain that tumbled down in near Biblical proportions a fortnight earlier, causing the abandonment. St Mirren, thoroughly dominant that day until the conditions intervened, continued where they had left off, taking the game to County from the first whistle and hoarding possession like a squirrel storing nuts for winter.

They missed a raft of early chances before belatedly making the breakthrough after 34 minutes. It was a well-worked goal, Kenny McLean fastening on to Paul McGowan's pass to shoot goalwards, only for Thompson to get a nick on it to claim it for himself. The striker had a role in the second as well early in the second half, rolling the ball back to Newton, who drilled a low shot past Mark Brown.

County, then, belatedly bared their teeth. A free-kick from substitute Graham Carey on the hour mark counted as their first effort on target, before his corner was turned in by Saunders with an acrobatic effort.

That seemed to be a platform for County to press for an equaliser but the red cards killed their momentum. Sproule could have little complaints about his dismissal for a wild, high lunge on Marc McAusland, while Saunders joined him in the dressing room for his second booking in the space of three minutes. Then came the penalty that wasn't.