Jordon Brown hailed his team’s fighting spirit after they came from 2-0 down to claim a morale-boosting point at Bayview.
The Blue Toon brushed aside the disappointment of a missed spot-kick before goals from Brown and a last-ditch leveller by Scott Ross saw them head home with a share of the spoils.
Joint-boss Brown said: “The feeling is relief obviously – scoring with the last kick of the game.
“It sums up our group as we’ve really had a struggle – it’s been a bit of a rut, especially away from home.
“To put a stop to that by finishing the game like that was excellent.
“We’re getting bodies back now and a couple of new ones through the door.
“We kept fighting until the last whistle, hopefully it can be a catalyst to kick on a bit.”
Peterhead started brightly with Brown firing the first effort of the match narrowly over in just four minutes.
However, it was the Fifers who went ahead four minutes later following their first attack of the match, Nathan Austin finding space to send a deflected shot into the bottom right corner.
The big striker was in on goal again soon after, squeezing the ball beyond Stuart McKenzie only for Caleb Goldie to clear off the line.
A second goal duly arrived for the home side on 23 minutes when a Brogan Walls corner found Jonathan Page rising to bullet a header low into the net.
Hamish Ritchie fired narrowly wide at the other end as Peterhead looked for a lifeline and they had the ideal opportunity to grab it on 39 minutes when Page upended Brown in the box.
However, Allan Fleming produced a diving save to turn Kieran Shanks’ penalty onto the post before the ball was hacked clear.
Jack Healy almost rubbed salt in the visitors’ wounds with a shot that drew an excellent diving save from McKenzie.
Peterhead stepped up a gear on the restart with Conor O’Keefe forcing a save from Fleming before Brown gave them hope when he reduced the deficit with a raking shot from distance that found the bottom right corner.
Austin and Page had chances to restore East Fife’s two-goal cushion before the match reached a dramatic finale four minutes into stoppage time when Shanks squared for Ross to send a shot into the bottom corner.
Brown had special praise for Shanks who shrugged off his penalty miss to set-up that dramatic late leveller.
He added: “We do get the lifeline before half-time and Shanks’ decision making at the end of the game just shows his class.
“To square that for Scotty (Scott Ross) when he could have lashed at one.
“It’ll come back for us, it’s maybe just not quite happening – we want to win every game we play in but a point was about right.”
