The Vale dominated for long spells and took the lead after 26 minutes through Alan Brown, however, they failed to add to their tally and with 15 minutes to go, Thornton equalised.

After the match, Hamill said: “It was really disappointing because we should have won and we missed a lot of chances.

“We should have won but we could have gone out near the end when Chic Smith made a great save — if they had scored that then we would have only had ourselves to blame.” The Vale will now travel to Memorial Park in Fife next Saturday for the replay.