We could have got more than a point - Ferguson

“When you come to Shamrock Park, generally, most of the time, you’re happy to go home with a point.

“But to be totally honest, I didn’t think we got what we deserved – from our second half performance, I thought we should have got more from the game.

“I would say we probably had 65 per cent of the play in the second half, we wanted to get it down and knock it about and created quite a few chances.

“Portadown played to their strengths and launched big balls into the box for their big men and I thought Davy Munster and Aaron Stewart were immense in dealing with that.

“Aaron played on with a massive gash in his forehead and he still went and won headers and tackles for us.

“Our midfielders are going to have to chip in with goals and Surgy gave us a great start but two individuals errors cost us.

“We spoke about it at half-time, it was put in the bin and we put it right in the second half.

“Dwayne Nelson knows he made a mistake for their second goal – he should have come and punched it – but he has saved us on a few occasions as well so there’ll be no criticism.

“Dwayne was good for us in the second half – he pulled off a save which could quite possibly have been a goal.”

With regard to penalty for United’s equaliser – won and converted by Alan Teggart – Ferguson said: “The defender didn’t make contact with the ball and he brought Alan down – there could have been another one when Jamie Davidson was brought down, if the referee had let play go on rather than blow for a free kick.

“But I’m not going to mention the performances of referees one bit because I have my own opinion and I might end up getting myself in trouble.

“One of the tackles was so hard the ball burst and someone ended up getting booked for it – when the ball bursts like that you know it’s been a 50/50 tackle,” added Ferguson.