The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Big-game pressure is something to embrace for veteran midfielder
Davidson confident Perth men can beat Caley Jags to secure Premiership status
Play-off football is all new to Murray Davidson. But high-stakes pressure with St Johnstone is very much familiar.
And the veteran Perth midfielder is confident Callum Davidson’s squad have the collective strength of character to secure their Premiership status for a 14th year.
“This is the first season that has been a proper relegation battle,” said the former Scotland international.
“You see the prize at the end of these two games. We’ve got every confidence we can stay in the league.
“Some people will probably say it is more important than cup finals.
“In cup finals it’s all excitement and you only really have something to gain.
“But this is the first season where it’s pretty black and white. We are fighting to stay in the league.
“There’s a different type of pressure that comes with that.”
Davidson added: “This team has shown over the years that we can deal with big games. We need to do it again.
“You are trying to stay in the league. People’s jobs are on the line. There is no getting away from that.
“But as a player you can’t think of that. You need to try and keep your Premiership status.
“When you sit down and think about it, it is a huge game for lots of obvious reasons that I don’t need to go into.
“There have been cup finals, European games but this is a completely different pressure. Everyone knows it’s a big game.
“We need to do the positives from periods this season over two games and make sure we are still a Premiership team.”
The Saints fans have stuck with the side through an atypical slog of a season.
More than 1,000 of them will be travelling up to Inverness.
“There have been a lot more successful periods through the years but the backing from the fans home and away has been great,” said Davidson.
“Over the last four or five months the fans have been brilliant. The players notice it.
“They always make a good atmosphere and they are always singing. It makes a difference.
“We can see they have put a lot of time and effort into it and all of the players appreciate it.
“Hopefully they turn out in their numbers in the next two games.
“It’s one last push from everyone. We are all pulling in the same direction. We all want the same thing and that is to stay in the Premiership.”
Meanwhile, soaking up setbacks has been par for the course for Saints boss Callum Davidson in a season that has been a stressful one pretty much from start to finish.
And, with a couple of fresh injury issues arising in the McDiarmid Park camp ahead of tonight’s first leg in Inverness, it will be a running theme to the very end.
“Training has been good but I still have doubts over one or two,” Davidson reported.
“But I am not going to tell you who they are.
“You’ve got niggles, you’ve got injuries and you’re hoping they’ll be back and you get dealt little blows here and there.
“It’s about how you deal with that as a group.
“We’ve been dealt one or two blows this week that we couldn’t really do anything about.
“Everybody else then has to say, ‘Well, I’m going to step up to the mark and I’m going to make sure that we stay in this league’.”
The winner will not be decided until Monday night in Perth but Davidson wants to see his team set the tone for the contest in the Highlands.
“It will be quick turnaround,” he said.
“A big ask.
“We are going to need the whole squad to get us through this. We have a positive mindset.
“We’ve done all our work and it is just about playing with a little bit of courage in these games, being confident in ourselves and knowing it is a game of football where we need to go and perform at our maximum level.
“You need to separate yourself from the emotion and tension.
“It’s a game of football and you’ve got to be calm and make good decisions.
“If you go in there with a frenzied mind, it’s really difficult to do it.
“We just need to calm everything down, make sure we apply ourselves properly and do the right things.
“Hopefully from that we can get the right result.”
As a rule in these playoffs, the Championship team is feeling better about itself than the side that finished second bottom in the top flight.
Davidson has not found it hard to view the play-offs as an opportunity, though.
“If we had got dragged into it, it would be a negative – a downer,” he said.
“But I think we’ve been on the up. We couldn’t catch the teams above us – we left too big a gap.
“But we managed to go from 12th to 11th and have given ourselves a chance of staying in the league.
“That’s all we’ve done so far. We need to try and finish off the job and make sure we get good results against a very good Inverness team.
“It’s going to be really difficult but I can tell by the attitude of everybody around the place that we’re desperate to stay in the league.”