The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Saints advance with Best of season
There are unbeaten runs and unbeaten runs. Yo u know the difference – those in which the padding outweighs the substance and those with real clout and meaning.
For a while it has felt as if St Jo h n s t o n e’s was teetering on the edge. Not any more. There can be no denying that by e xtending the c urrent sequence into double figures for only the second time in the club’s top flight history with a superb Betfred Cup away win at Motherwell, there is proper heft to this one.
And there can also be no denying that this is a proper football team developing.
The best result of the season so far for Saints? It has to be.
Producing a comeback victory against an opponent of Motherwell’s calibre, on the back of the second significant line-up change in the space of four days because of injuries in key positions, is a very impressive achievement.
And the best bit about it is that two players who were drifting to peripheral territory were at the very heart of it – Callum Hendry and Michael O’Halloran.
For Hendry, his struggles to impact games of football this season have been as stark as his ability to do that consistently in the campaign before, when super sub blossomed into super starter.
The wait for a goal was a long one – 12 matches, most of them starts, to be precise. But even when that wait came to an end, it was only with a late penalty in a one-sided cup tie against the bottom side in the SPFL that had long since been put to bed.
Levelling the scores deep into the second half of a contest your team was trailing in, with a cup quarter-final place at stake, was the true dam-breaker.
“It was a massive relief for me,” Hendry admitted. “It would be for any striker going through a drought.
“This goal is different to the one against Brechin. It’s against a Premiership opponent, I’ve started and it’s from open play. This one meant a lot more. But maybe it stemmed from being given that penalty. That’s the kind of team we have here.
“I’ve not been trying to change anything. I’m training as hard as I did last season because I was delighted with how that ended.
“It’s been about getting my head down and working hard. The gaffer and all the boys told me it would come and to be patient. These things happen. It’s football.
“It’s a team game. If I can help the team to a win and not score then I would rather do that than score and get beaten. I’m just happy to do my bit.
“Listen, stats are important for a striker but I’m not worried about that yet. It would be different if we were at the end of the season and I’d still not scored.
“The gaffer has pulled me aside a lot and filled me with confidence. He’s told me just to keep my head down.
“I’ve also been working with Ma c c a (Steven MacLean). All the strikers do a bit of shooting with him after training and Macca was the same, telling me it would come.
“I’m just delighted it happened today after starting the game.”
This term has been much more of a slog than last for Hendry but he is actually only one goal shy of his three-goal tally at the same stage. So it isn’t delusional for him to target bettering the final total of nine he reached in 2019-20.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I see what the fans say and stuff about me lacking confidence.
“It’s not that. I’m not lacking confidence. The ball just wasn’t dropping for me. It happens to footballers.
“I don’t overthink it. The goals will come and this is the start of it.”
The future for Hendry seems pretty clear over the next few weeks and possibly months.
Stevie May is the number one choice up front, with the former Blackburn Rovers man, Chris Kane and Guy Melamed all likely to be dropped in and out around him, hopefully making a telling impact as was the case on Saturday.
The future for O’Halloran is more curious.
He was the Fir Park game- changer, with his direct running and tenacity at the root of both Hendry’s equaliser and David Wotherspoon’s winner.
These assists were utterly deserved.
O’Halloran was excellent in the first half. Only a heavy last touch denied him a shot at goal after he had surged into the box on one occasion and the lack of a near post run from a team-mate frustrated him on another.
Poor Ricki Lamie will do well to get Saturday afternoon out of his mind in a hurry.
It’s been a long time – too long – since the description ‘ u n p l a y a b l e’ could be a tt a c h e d to the 2 0 14 Scottish Cup winner but this was a performance which merited it.
“He’s fast, isn’t he?” said Hendry. “I was trying to catch up and get in the box so he could put a cross in!
“When he is on his day, he is frightening. He is so fast. I think any defender would struggle to keep up with him.
“He deserved to have a performance like that after the w ay he has been training.
“He’s such a big asset. If you end up one v one against Mikey O’Halloran, I don’t think anyone in the league is catching him, to be honest. It’s good we’ve got him.”
They’ve got him. But what will Davidson now do with him?
The right wing-back role clearly suits O’Halloran.
The benefits of coming on to the ball when you’re as quick and direct as the ex- Rangers and Bolton Wa n d e r e r s man are obvious.
And he didn’t look like a fish out of water going back the way. He even had the defensive savvy to make a cute professional foul to spoil a threatening Motherwell counter-attack at one point.
Davidson spoke a few weeks ago about O’Halloran rediscovering the r aw pleasure of football. The pep talk would appear to have worked beautifully on this evidence.
And post- match, the Perth boss felt the time was right to break with tradition.
“I don’t normally single players out but Michael O’Halloran dragged us back into the game with his heart more than anything else,” he said. “That was really pleasing to see.
“Michael is doing more defensively nowadays and he’s even heading the ball at training!
“He was tremendous. He showed his drive and determination at the first goal when he just kept going but he also put in a f ew tremendous balls before that.”
It would be a very bold call for Davidson to keep O’Halloran at wing-back against Celtic on Sunday if Danny McNamara recovers from the tight hamstring that kept him out at Fir Park.
McNamara, after all, has been one of Saints’ best players week in, week out – if not the best.
But O’Halloran played well against Hibs in a more familiar forward role last midweek and the performance against Motherwell didn’t feel like a case of him finding the right position. It felt like him rediscovering the right mindset.
Whatever the role, you c a n’ t really see a St Johnstone side lining up at Celtic Park without him.
The Betfred Cup will now go on the back-burner but Saints have serious intent when their last-eight tie with Dunfermline comes around.
“Cup runs are massive,” said Hendry. “Especially for a club like ours. We are delighted to get through especially after going down.
“Anything can happen in a cup. I think we deserve a run in one of them.
“The gaffer said after the game that he wants us in a final.
“It’s just as important as the league games. So it’s massive for us. We want to win some silverware for the fans again.”
A St Johnstone book went on sale at the weekend, listing the 60 ‘Greatest Saints’ of all time.
It is the title of a previous one that springs to mind when assessing the presentday side as Hampden Park starts to loom large and a push up the Premiership table likewise.
This season is undoubtedly ‘ Bristling with Possibilities’. 1- 0