"Vale had obviously lost a little bit of confidence of late and we had spoken about not giving them a let-up, so to concede in seconds was not what we intended," said boss Colin Calderwood after the match.
"What pleased me after that was the air of calmness we showed in our play. We took the sting out of Vale, scored the equaliser and then started to play very well.
"We were very strong in the second half, even before the sending off, and there only looked like there was going to be one winner."