RELIABLE ROONEY RISES TO OCCASION
Saints hero Shaun rides to the rescue to salvage point
WHEN you need a goal to change the face of a season, the answer is clear. Sling the ball into the box and pray to God that Shaun Rooney gets his nut on it.
Yesterday’s offering from the St Johnstone wing-back didn’t send shockwaves around the country in quite the same way as the Hampden efforts against Livingston and Hibs last season that won two cup finals for Callum Davidson’s side.
However, his 68th-minute leveller against Dundee might still end up being not all that far behind in terms of importance.
Saints had been nothing short of dreadful in the opening half-hour or more of this relegation tussle. A disgrace, actually. One-nil down to an early effort from Jordan Marshall, they were so bad at times that a fantastic away support simply couldn’t stop themselves from barracking their team.
Yet, for all that, Rooney’s goal — a header, like all his Greatest Hits — keeps them five points clear of bottom dogs Dundee with four games left and draws them just that little bit closer to the crisis-hit duo of St Mirren and Aberdeen.
There’s still plenty of work to do for Saints to make sure they keep their place in the Premiership for next term and they will definitely have to produce far more competent performances than this — but the pressurised situations to come would have been all the more asphyxiating had Rooney, still settling back into the side after ankle surgery in December, not prevented them from falling to defeat.
For Mark McGhee’s side, it is beginning to look like their tea’s oot. Let it be said that they definitely, undoubtedly, showed up for this one.
They played really well in the first half. Paul McGowan and Charlie Adam used their experience, the full-backs Marshall and Cammy Kerr asked questions. There was a real sense of desire around them.
But, with Adam visibly tiring, they ran out of gas after the break and let the visitors back into it. They just couldn’t maintain their early intensity.
McGhee had spent the week rattling on about being hungry and cold. It surely won’t be long now before he goes the whole hog and ends up jobless. That’s ten games now since he took over in February and he still hasn’t won one.
Maybe the chat about turning the heating off and going without his dinner
— an attempt, he insisted, to remind his players of the need for sacrifice — did elicit a reaction. Not enough of one, though.
McGhee’s mildly amusing antics could be construed as a tactic to deflect from asking why he was ever brought back north in the first place when, by his own admission, he had stopped looking for jobs and was focusing on other things.
The one blessing, though, is that he will not have to fulfil a promise to go naked for the week had his team won. For all the fun and games and wackiness of McGhee’s press conferences, the end result was the same as usual. Failure to win. Having stormed out of the traps, though, the home side did get themselves in front on 10 minutes. Max Anderson did really well on the right to take a long pass from Adam, get it under control and dunt it on to McGowan in a more central position.
Clearly playing with his dander up — and what a sight that is to behold with this little fellow — McGowan did well to protect the ball before laying into the path of the onrushing Marshall.
The left-back’s low angled effort then seemed to outfox goalkeeper Zander Clark, who stood rooted to the spot, and zipped into the net in fine style.
Clark, set to leave McDiarmid Park this summer under freedom of contract if he has any sense, didn’t look too clever just a matter of minutes later either. He flapped hopelessly at a corner from the left from Adam and must have been mightily relieved to see Ryan Sweeney head the ball high and wide at the back post.
Saints had managed an effort on goal in the early exchanges when a looping effort from Jamie McCart ended up going just over. However, the game would be just eight minutes short of the interval before they threatened again.
McCart moved the ball on to Nadir Ciftci around 22 yards out and his thunderous effort forced a really good save from Ian Lawlor. Callum Hendry then toe-poked the ball wide after being given a clear sight of the target.
That came as scant consolation to the 2,000-plus crowd in the away end, though. Some of the stuff they were forced to sit through during that opening period was absolutely inexcusable.
There was no urgency, no purpose, no sense of rising to the occasion. Nothing. Just the pointless exercise of passing the ball around the back followed by aimless punts up the park. It was awful. For long spells.
Just short of the half-hour mark, those punters behind Clark’s goal could hold their anger in no longer. After another long ball had sailed into no man’s land, the booing began. And it continued for some time after another attempt to move the ball forward ended up breaking down.
St Johnstone were winning cups this time last year. No matter what has gone wrong in the interim, there is no excuse for dross like this.
They were better after the break, though. They asked greater questions of a Dundee side that just couldn’t maintain their earlier grip on proceedings. And it came as no great surprise when Rooney levelled.
Melker Hallberg flighted in a corner from the left that Lawlor really should have done better with. As it was, the Dundee keeper failed to command his area and Rooney ghosted in to force home a header from just a matter of yards.
He grabbed the ball, booted the advertising hoardings and screamed into the thunder emanating from those jubilant fans behind the goal. This has been a season of real frustration for Saints along with bad recruitment and grim displays.
Rooney’s outburst possibly spoke to that. A brilliant low save from Lawlor from a Callum Hendry shot shortly afterwards prevented them from having even more to shout about.
However, they are in a position now to reel in the teams above them rather than become obsessed by Dundee below.
They’ve got St Mirren, another team that can’t buy a win, at home next Saturday. Win that and it’s game on. If they get a chance to fire in a corner or a free-kick, no prizes for guessing who they’ll be aiming for.
DUNDEE (4-3-3): Lawlor; Kerr, McGhee, Sweeney, Marshall; Anderson (Mulligan 81), Byrne (Rudden 75), Adam; McMullan (McCowan 54), Mullen, McGowan (McGinn 75).
Subs (not used): Sharp, Fontaine, McDaid, Elliott,
Ibsen Rossi. Booked: Adam.
ST JOHNSTONE (3-4-1-2): Clark; Cleary (Sang 46), Gordon, McCart; Rooney, Hallberg, Davidson, Booth; Crawford (MacPherson 65); Hendry, Ciftci (May 81). Subs (not used): Parish, Brown, Middleton, Mahon, Bair, Butterfield. Booked: McCart, MacPherson. Referee: Bobby Madden. Attendance: 7937.