May says players must stay united in survival scrap

“Togetherness and fight” saw Stevie May lift the Scottish Cup with St Johnstone 10 years ago this week.

And it will take those qualities to make sure the Perth club don’t mark the anniversary by falling out of the Premiership a few days later.

The 2014 hero made his first start in nearly five months at Livingston on Saturday.

For a long time it was looking as if he’d played a part in securing a victory that would see Saints leapfrog Ross County and out of the play-off spot – or, at the very least, close the gap to a point – only for a stoppage-time home winner to sink Craig Levein’s side.

But they’ll get the chance to move into 10th by beating County in midweek.

And May knows better than anyone at Mcdiarmid Park, having won three trophies and gone through a play-off ordeal two years ago, what it will take to secure victory on Wednesday night and then back it up at Motherwell four days later.

“The fans will be there,” he said. “They’ve been with us all season.

“I feel for them because over the years they have come to expect a lot better than what we have given them this season.

“But we have been in this position before and got out of it.

“In terms of a league game, it won’t come any bigger than this – two teams going at it with only one game to go after it. It would be huge to win.

“It was said that we were down a couple of years ago and we’ve been written off plenty of times in the past.

“We’ve proved people wrong on many occasions.

“We’ll give everything we can on Wednesday – for the fans and for ourselves.

“We’ve been fortunate as a club to be in the top half, in Europe and cup finals for multiple years in a row.

“You have to take the good with the bad and get the performances required to get us out of it.

“We know what it takes. We need togetherness and we need fight.”

You could make an argument that learning that County had been well beaten by Motherwell poured salt into Perth wounds.

But May didn’t subscribe to that theory.

“We started as well as we had all season and got the goal,” he said.

“Looking back, we had the opportunities to score more goals. In the first 25 minutes or so, their keeper made a lot of good saves.

“But we killed ourselves towards the end of the game.

“There was a miscommunication at a corner which we can’t afford to happen.

“But Ross County lost so that gives us another chance. It’s still in our hands.

“It was really tough to take but it would have been even worse if County had won.

“It all goes to Wednesday and we must take the positives from what happened.

“There’s no time to overthink it now. We have to move on and have a go.”

Stevie May.