A DREAM nearly became a nightmare for Kallum Higginbotham as his first time with the captain's armband nearly ended in defeat.

With the clock ticking down to the full-time whistle it was Higginbotham who struck at the death to save what he believes could be a "crucial" point against Elgin City in their quest for promotion.

Saturday's 1-1 draw keeps Kelty perched at the top of the League Two table and the merited point was earned without club captain Michael Tidser, who pulled his hamstring during the week.

His injury led to Higginbotham leading the team out at New Central Park, but the 32-year-old told Times Sport that the honour was close to being ruined by the impending defeat before his late effort broke Elgin's resolve.

"It was a great moment for me to grab that armband and lead us out today," he said.

"I was thinking to myself late on that we were going to lose the game after being asked to wear the armband for the first time! It was quite fitting that I got that late goal for us to keep that unbeaten run going for us."

He continued: "It's an important, maybe crucial point for us.

"We want to win every game we play, but Elgin came here looking to frustrate us and for large parts of the game they were able to do that.

"We stuck to our style of play, kept pushing and eventually managed to get that goal we deserved. It could be the case that come the end of the season, or even in the next few weeks, we'll look back at this point and it becomes a very valuable one for us."

Kelty fell behind to a questionable penalty conceded by Dougie Hill on the half-hour mark with Archie MacPhee duly converting.

On the awarding of the penalty, Higginbotham said: "I don't know whether it was one or not - I'd need to see it again - but Elgin's players were adamant that Dougie brought the lad down, but Dougie is adamant that he got pushed in the back and fell into the boy. I'll take Dougie's word over their players, that's for sure."

Kelty boss Kevin Thomson was furious with the decision made by Lloyd Wilson, and the cinch SPFL League Two Manager of the Month for August stated that it was "one of the worst I've seen given".

"I think there were 600 people in the stadium asking what the penalty was given for as well," he said.

"I actually thought it was a foul on Dougie (Hill), to be honest. He's an honest boy and he'd be the first to say if he was grappling, but he wasn't and it was never a penalty."

The late leveller by Higginbotham earned a share of the spoils but Thomson admitted that it was "two points dropped".

He said: "Fair play to Elgin, they came here with a game plan to make it difficult for us.

"I felt we should have scored a couple of goals before the penalty. We were well on top, creating chances and then fell behind.

"We finished with five up front and went gung-ho as they were defending their lead well.

"We got a bit of brilliance from Kallum Higginbotham at the end to get us a point, but credit to Elgin for coming here and making life hard for us. I'll never criticise teams coming here and doing that as it's up to us to find ways of breaking them down and it led to the game being quite a difficult watch at times today.

"Kallum has got that brilliance in him and we love him to bits.

"He has a real personality and that real quality to drive the team on and we're delighted to have him here."