May sure Saints have fitting finish despite the dramatic finale
The joy of six was etched on Stevie May’s face after St Johnstone had grabbed a place at the Premiership’s top table. The Perth men may have left it late to secure a remarkable eighth top-six finish in ten attempts to triumph in the battle of the Saints, but the sense of achievement was in no way diminished at having to rely on hamilton giving them a leg up.
There were just four minutes left in Perth and a mere 60 seconds at the Fountain of Youth Stadium when the picture changed dramatically.
Substitute Glenn Middleton’s 86th-minute match-winner and Kyle Munro’s last-gasp equaliser for Accies put the seal on a remarkable few months for Callum Davidson in his first season in management.
With the League Cup already adorning the McDiarmid Park trophy cabinet, Davidson had surely not dared to dream of such a scenario when his side’s winless run went into double figures.
But May, who made Middleton’s goal before also forcing a superb save from Ross Laidlaw after coming on, has become used to such drama.
‘It’s a great achievement,’ he said. ‘The odds were stacked against us but I think we deserve it.
‘I knew St Mirren were winning when I went on. A few of the boys had heard at half-time, though, that hamilton were a goal up and I had to tell them it was the other way around.
‘After we scored, I could see signs on our bench that maybe something had happened at hamilton but we didn’t know for sure on the pitch.
‘Then we had to wait a couple of minutes before we got the shout that it was over and we’d made the top six.
‘Yet you could possibly say that we were actually playing our best football earlier in the season when we weren’t picking up results.
‘even at Christmas we were still near the bottom of the table and considering where we were, you couldn’t have predicted we’d win a cup and get into the top six.’
May believes Saints have a young, talented squad that has the potential to get even better, also describing it as a very good time to be at the club.
Their next goal is to inflict further pain on Livingston by overtaking their cup final rivals over the course of the remaining five matches.
‘everything is a bonus from here on,’ said May. ‘But we’ll give it a real go and see where we end up. We’re all buzzing about the challenge.
‘The manager has stuck by the boys and with the way we want to play as well and there have been some big performances in big games, which is a sign of a really good team.
‘But this is a club that has always over-achieved and this is one of our biggest over-achieving seasons yet.’
Middleton, signed on loan from Rangers in January, is keen to share in Saints’ future successes after missing out on League Cup final glory.
While the winger and his team-mates celebrated, however, their Ross County counterparts were forced to grit their teeth in the realisation that they have a battle on their hands to retain their top-flight status.
John hughes offered the assessment that had his team taken anything it would have been an injustice.
Defender Keith Watson shared his manager’s sentiment, adding: ‘The performance as a whole wasn’t good enough. We were lacking something and it needs to be better.’
For all that they were out-fought, out-thought and out-gunned, County had arguably the best chance of the match when the ball fell to Coll Donaldson in the 66th minute with the defence standing off him.
The defender rushed his shot with the result that he missed the target altogether.
Watson offered a defence of sorts for his team-mate, explaining that the ball had come to him on Donaldson’s wrong foot. But he also warned that there will be recriminations if the County collective don’t up their game.
‘everybody needs to be better if we want to stay in this league,’ he added. ‘Because if we perform like that were going to be nowhere near it. It looks like it’s going all the way down to the wire. But it’s still in our own hands and we can take some confidence from the results we’ve had against the likes of Celtic, Aberdeen and hibs.’