‘I wanted Jack to join me’

He grabbed his phone and crossed his fingers. “Are you coming to Barnsley?” Stevie Mallan text his former manager Jack Ross and asked him if he was joining him south of the border. If anything, it was more out of hope than anything else.

Having endured a tough start to life at Oakwell, Mallan found himself out of the reckoning.

And just as he was getting back into the fold, the manager that signed him, Paul Heckingbottom, had departed for Leeds.

The rumour mill started and to no surprise of Mallan, his former Buddies boss was top of the shortlist.

For Mallan, he admits, it would have been the perfect appointment as he looked to force his way into the first team . Ross would give him his chance, he believed.

“You would never believe how excited I was,”he laughs.“Seeing his name linked, I thought there was a real chance that he would come to Barnsley.

“It really looked like that was going to be the case. It would have been perfect for me, and I genuinely thought I was going to get to work under him again.

“Fortunately for St Mirren he never left. Personally, I was a bit gutted when the move never happened.

“He stayed and became a legend at St Mirren because they went on to win the league.

“He has now got a huge move to Sunderland and he is showing people in England exactly how good he is so credit to him. He made me a better player and I learned so much from him.

“Do I wish I could have worked with him at Barnsley? Of course, I do. But it never happened for whatever reason.”

In the end Mallan’s brief foray south of the border didn’t go as planned.

Relegation to League One followed as Ross knocked back the job. It was handed to Jose Mourinho’s former right-hand man Jose Morais.

Mallan added:“The first three or four months I wasn’t playing as much as I would have liked. I was doing everything I could to impress the manager. He eventually started playing me and I felt like I was making a lot of progress.

“When I did start playing then it was brilliant. I loved it and was relishing going to all of these big stadiums. I was playing against teams like Aston Villa and Fulham.

“Eventually the manager left and he got a good move to Leeds. That just killed me at that point. I was out the team again and things weren’t going my way.

“When I heard that there was a chance of going to Hibs then I was delighted because I thought it would be the perfect platform for me to come back to Scotland.”