The Championship title race will go down to the final day after Dundee were held to a 0-0 draw by Cove Rangers on Friday night.  

Gary Bowyer’s men will head to Ochilview for a straight shootout with Queen’s Park for automatic promotion to the Premiership. 

The Dens Park side are only two points clear of Owen Coyle’s men after a frustrating night for them at home to Cove. 

Queen’s will take on Morton at Cappielow this afternoon to determine whether the gap will change ahead of next Friday. 

Bowyer said: “You couldn’t have scripted this any better. I’m starting to think it might’ve been set up from the very beginning, but that’s just me being a cynical so-and-so.  

“I can’t wait, I’m excited. I just told the players in there. Nothing has changed for us from game one to 36 it will be. 

“We’ve got to focus on the positives. First half we were a bit slow in our tempo but in the second half, we came out with a better urgency. It makes it exciting for next week.  

“The clarity in our messages to the players was exactly the same, even if we’d won tonight, it would still be the same. We want to go win the game next week. 

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“In the second half, we peppered their goal. We had Zach Robinson’s shot over, Lyall Cameron’s shot over, Luke McCowan’s shot wide, we hit the post and Ryan Sweeney then hits over. We had a lot of attempts at goal but what we didn’t do was make their goalkeeper work enough. To be fair, he made a good save from Cameron as well. There are lots of things we can take from this game. 

“We’ll pick up Queen’s Park’s game against Morton next week. We need to make sure we recover well over the weekend.” 

It was attack against defence for nearly the entire evening as Paul Hartley set his side up to gain a valuable point in his side’s fight for survival. They now sit one point above bottom-placed Hamilton and two behind Arbroath with the relegation fight also due to be settled on the final matchday.

Clear-cut chances were very few and far between if truth be told. However, the hosts thought they’d nicked it at the end, but Lee Ashcroft’s header crashed off the post. Cove managed to hold out to set up a fantastic finale to the Championship campaign. 

Hartley was thrilled with his side’s resolute performance. He said: “I thought we were resilient in our attitude, work rate, and discipline. We knew we wouldn’t create many chances. We went with a system to try and frustrate Dundee – we knew their fans would get on them pretty quickly.  

“It’s a great point for us. We’ve given ourselves a slight chance and that’s all we’ve said in the last couple of weeks when everybody had written us off. We’ve shown that we’ve got a bit of character about us. 

“We don’t know what’s going to happen between Arbroath and Thistle, but all we could ask for going into the final game of the season was a chance.”