Hamilton 0 St Mirren 1
A BIG centre-forward capable of providing a regular supply of season-defining goals is the needle in a haystack most sides on St Mirren’s kind of budget are looking for. As this rollercoaster win over Hamilton showed, though, a goalkeeper you can rely on is arguably even more important.
Jon Obika won his way into the hearts of Buddies fans on what turned out to be the final night of last term when his winning strike at home against Hearts — his 12th of the campaign — kept them off the bottom of the Premiership and safe, as it turned out, from relegation.
He got off the mark for the new campaign with a 19th-minute effort that made the difference yesterday, but there is no question it was the excellent work of Jak Alnwick between the sticks that built the platform to take those points and made sure they were safely spirited away.
Released by Rangers in the summer, the 27-year-old had big boots to fill in replacing Vaclav Hladky. However, reinforcing his reputation after a positive start to the campaign, he made two big saves in the first 10 minutes from David Templeton and David Moyo and then came to the rescue with a handful of stops in the second period as his team lost their way.
‘Without being disrespectful to the rest of the players in the team, your two most important positions are your goalkeeper and striker,’ said Buddies manager Jim Goodwin. ‘This year, we’re hoping for 15 goals, maybe 20, from Obika.
‘And if you’ve got a goalkeeper at the other end who can save you valuable points, it’s a great place to start from.
‘You look at the top teams and they’ve all got a goalkeeper who digs them out of out of a hole at times and Jak has done that in the opening three games.
‘We were all concerned about losing Vaclav, but I don’t think there will be too many fans out there all that worried just now after seeing the last three games.
‘His distribution off the deck is incredible but the saves made the three points. Without that, it could have been two points dropped — or all three.
‘We could have made this afternoon a whole lot more comfortable if we’d been a bit more clinical in the first half. Second half was very