SIMEON Jackson thinks that St Mirren were robbed of the chance of a crucial three points in their crunch basement battle against Dundee by dodgy penalty calls.

The forward was awarded a spot-kick in the first-half by referee Bobby Madden and converted it to put St Mirren ahead, but Kenny Miller hit back to drag the home side level.

Jackson felt though that St Mirren should have had at least one more penalty award in the second half. The forward was booked for simulation as he went down under a challenge from Genseric Kusunga, before further shouts from Paul McGinn and Danny Mullen were waved away.

“He has dangled a leg out, but he hasn’t caught me and I have got up as quick as I could,” explained Jackson about his own claim.

“At the end of the day it is still simulation according to the referee. It was harsh but the referee sees it differently.

“I thought maybe we should have had another penalty with Danny’s. I haven’t seen it back but they were all over him and there was another shout with Paul’s.”

Dundee boss Jim McIntyre was adamant that the penalty St Mirren did get shouldn’t have been awarded either, feeling that the contact made on Jackson by Cammy Kerr wasn’t sufficient for the striker to hit the deck.

But Jackson said: “It was 100 percent a penalty. I felt I got myself in the right position and I felt he pushed me in the back and that was it. There were also a few other ones, but you take the ones you get.

“[McIntyre] is standing somewhere else. He will see it from his perspective, but I got in the right area and it was a penalty.”

Despite the disappointment of the penalty decisions his team didn’t get, Jackson was pleased enough in the end to accept a point that kept them off the bottom of the table at the expense of their hosts.

“It was a fair point,” he said. “You could see how big it was for both of us.

“I thought we started well and went ahead. We then switched off for a bit and came back in and it was fair in the end.

“It was good to take a point. We would have loved to take all three, but we just have to keep scrapping and fighting.

“I think we have progressively built in terms of performances. This was a 90-minute performance that we needed.

“Last week we got to 80 so we are building and hopefully things will turn after the international break.”

Jackson is convinced too that St Mirren will soon find a remedy to their lack of goals from open play, a failing that has so far plagued their campaign.

“We are just working on it,” he said. “Players in certain positions are getting the hang of it and patterns of play we want to use.

“We are creating chances and putting balls into the box and we just need to keep working on it.”