The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Historians select Saints with the brightest halos
Cup finals don’t come along very regularly for
St Johnstone.
Excluding the Challenge Cup for lower-league sides, Sunday’s Betfred League Cup clash with Livingston will only be the fourth final in Saints’ 137-year history.
Willie Ormond’s 1969 Saints team broke new ground when they made it to Hampden Park in the League Cup final, losing 1-0 to Celtic.
In 1998, Paul Sturrock and then Sandy Clark guided Saints through the knockout rounds to the final of the same competition, when they again lost, this time 2-1 to Rangers.
The only triumph came, of course, in 2014 when Tommy Wright’s side defeated Dundee United 2-0 to become Scottish Cup winners and legends.
Club historians Alastair Blair and Brian Doyle recently published a book on The Great Saints, which included the top 50 Saints players of all time.
Courier Sport tasked the co-authors with naming a Best Ever Cup Final team from the 1969, 1998 and 2014 line-ups, as well as Callum Davidson’s squad for this weekend. The agreed formation was 4-4-2 and, on this occasion, no collusion was permitted.
It transpires, great St Johnstone minds don’t always think alike, with Alastair and Brian only having seven joint picks in their starting XIs. And they have chosen different managers.
Alastair Blair’s team
In theory, picking a team from every Saints side that has contested a major final (plus the team that will play against Livingston on Sunday) ought to be easy.
You simply go to Hagiography: The 60 Greatest Saints and select the very best from there.
However, football is a game of emotions as well as hard facts, so I have, in at least one instance, allowed my heart to overrule my head.
Not that, in my opinion, this weakens the team in the slightest, but rather, again in my opinion, increases its attacking potential.
Goalkeeper – With apologies to Zander Clark and Jimmy Donaldson, both of whom were great keepers, this was a straight competition between Alan Main and Alan Mannus, with Main just making the cut. He should have played for Scotland and would have if he was at a “bigger” club.
Right-back – This was easy – Dave Mackay. Like Main, he should have played for Scotland, but instead had to settle for being the 2014 Scottish Cup winners’ captain.
Left-back – It has to be Willie Coburn, another of the greatest Saints. Willie tackled properly – hard but fair – and didn’t like wingers (not live ones anyway).
Centre-backs – Another fairly easy choice. Alan Kernaghan and Steven Anderson will be the twin pillars at the heart of this side’s defensive unit.
Ando would throw himself in front of a tank to stop a goal and, as we know from 2014, is also capable of scoring in the biggest of games.
Kernaghan, as well as being a proper defensive unit, was also a very good footballer, able to bring the ball out of defence and, if required, beat players and score goals from almost any distance.
Centre midfield –I initially thought I’d anchor the team around Nick Dasovic. Nick made our alltime Saints XI in Hagiography, but for this team I have looked to the future and chosen Ali McCann.
I was at Coatbridge to see his debut and thought at the time that he looked promising.
Today, he is the linchpin around which St Johnstone revolve and, while I hope he stays for another season rather than going south too early as I believe Stevie May did, he will in time move to a much bigger club than St Johnstone.
Alongside Ali is Philip Scott. Like McCann, Phizzy was a box-to-box midfielder, but arguably with a greater goal threat.
Bob Crampsey told me he thought that Philip might have played for Scotland but although that didn’t happen he did go to the top fight in England (something even home-based Scottish internationalists struggle to do nowadays) where, unfortunately, his career was cut short by injury.
Wide left – It was in the centre of midfield that I had the most problems in deciding who to pick. Out wide, there is no debate. It has to be John Connolly – the greatest ever St Johnstone player – at outside left.
Even though he played more centrally for Saints, he performed on the left wing for Everton after his move there and would be adept at cutting in and linking up with the strikers.
Wide right – I’ve gone for another obvious choice in Kenny Aird. There are others who came into consideration, notably John O’Neil, but on his day Kenny would turn opposition defenders inside-out before laying on a goal with an accurate cross.
And he could score goals too. Fast and direct, his ability to dribble past fullbacks and leave them for dead is something that is largely missing from the modern game.
Strikers – One of these is easy. It has to be Henry Hall, the scorer of more goals at the top level than anyone else in the club’s history.
Alongside Henry, I’ve chosen Steven MacLean. Macca’s football intelligence and ability to bring others into play would mean that he would link up with Hall and the entire midfield and create opportunities that others might not see.
Substitutes: Goalkeeper – Alan Mannus. Defenders – Frazer Wright and John McQuillan. Midfielders – David Wotherspoon, Paul Kane, John O’Neil, Fred Aitken and Ian McPhee. Striker – George O’Boyle
Manager – Tommy Wright. For me, it’s a straight competition between Willie Ormond, Tommy Wright or Callum Davidson. Tommy is Saints’ greatest manager.
Callum would bring all the knowledge and science that football has added since Willie’s day, whereas Willie would just tell his side to go and beat the opposition because they are better than them.
The emphasis would be more on attack with Willie, but in today’s football world I’d have to go with Tommy or Callum. Tommy gets the nod, just, because of his greater experience and the fact that he has won a cup (albeit Callum was at his side).
But if Callum guides our team to success at Hampden, I may have to change my mind if we get invited back to do this again the next time Saints make a major final.
Brian Doyle’s team Goalkeeper – This is a really difficult one to start with but for me Alan Mannus just edges it.
He was clearly less flamboyant than Alan Main but he gets the nod on the basis that he had 59 clean sheets in 192 Premiership matches giving him a 30.73% rate.
Main had 40 clean sheets from 143 top flight appearances, yielding a 27.97% rate. His saves against Dundee and in Monaco will live long in the favourite memories category.
It’s very hard to separate them but Mannus’ saves in the 2014 cup final just get him my vote by a whisker.
Right-back – Dave Mackay is a stand-out.
Dave was a captain with great leadership qualities. He was a good, clean tackler, which gets him in the team ahead of John Lambie, who was also an excellent full-back with great speed. It’s the finest of margins choosing the better of the two again.
Left-back – Willie Coburn. In my view Brian Easton was a top defender but Willie was quicker and could use either foot, whereas Easty was predominantly left-sided.
Willie played for 10 seasons, making 324 appearances in all competitions.
Unfortunately, Easton suffered from injury towards the end of his time at Saints which restricted his number of appearances (167) to around half of those made by Coburn.
His (only) goal against Aberdeen will live long in the memory. It’s good to see him now playing again for Hamilton Accies.
Centre-backs – Whilst Frazer Wright was a very good defender, Benny Rooney was a dynamic and outstanding captain. A true leader.
He chipped in with quite a few goals throughout his Saints career too. Darren Dods wasn’t in the frame to play alongside Rooney.
Leaving Steven Anderson out of this team, particularly in view of his cup final performance and goal, was really, really hard.
He was a truly great Saint who, in my view, deserves to be in the next Hall of Fame selection.
However, Alan Kernaghan was an established Republic of Ireland international player and brought both experience and genuine quality to the 1998 team.
Central midfield – Nick Dasovic wins hands down for the number four role.
You are comparing an international player with either Alex Gordon or James Dunne from the 1969 and 2014 teams.
When you add in the fact Nick scored in both the semi-final and final, that puts him miles ahead.
Again, John Connolly was a top, top player who along with Henry Hall helped take Saints into Europe for the first time.
He had the ability to glide past opponents and either score himself or put it on a plate for a colleague. In a 4-4-2 you could play him out wide on the left or, as here, in the middle.
John was the best player I’ve ever seen in a Saints shirt.
Wide right – Kenny Aird was an old-fashioned Scottish winger, both fast and tricky, who not only made goals for his teammates but scored some spectacular ones himself.
There were two against Rangers at Muirton which particularly stand out.
He received some rough treatment from opposition defenders who wouldn’t get away with those type of tackles in today’s game.
Wide left – When compared to Miguel Simao or Mikey O’Halloran, Fred Aitken was pedestrian.
But what a left foot and boy could he land a cross on a sixpence. He scored an impressive 56 goals himself but also created so many for Hall and Connolly.
Strikers – Henry Hall transformed Willie Ormond’s team when he arrived from Stirling Albion. He was a natural goalscorer who was always in the right place at the right time.
Henry didn’t score many with his head but when the chances came along he just side-footed the ball into the net. He was Saints’ top goalscorer in four of six seasons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As the song goes “…and Henry is better than anyone”.
Steven MacLean was a prolific penalty box scorer who could also supply chances for others. Who can ever forget his goal in the 2014 final and, of course, his celebration after it? He gets in ahead of big Buck McCarry, who was a different type of player, and George O’Boyle.
Substitutes – Goalkeeper – Alan Main. Midfielders Murray Davidson, Chris Millar, David Wotherspoon and Liam Craig. Strikers – Gordon Whitelaw, Stevie May and Roddy Grant.
Manager – Willie Ormond
Both Tommy Wright and Willie Ormond had the knack of finding and developing young players.
John Connolly, Jim Pearson and Gordon Smith are great examples for Ormond.
The fact that Ormond went on to be Scotland team manager and took us to the World Cup in Germany also adds weight to the argument for him.
Accordingly, even though Tommy worked wonders, my vote goes to Ormond.