I T was, indeed, a moment to take the breath away.

Chris Millar tends not to trouble himself with scoring goals, with his last one having come more than three years and nine months previously in a Scottish Cup draw at Brechin City in March 2011.

You can imagine just how much the St Johnstone midfielder enjoyed it, then, when an eventful little saunter back and forth along the edge of the Dundee United penalty area with three minutes to play ended with a shot that nestled cosily in Radoslaw Cierzniak's left-hand corner.

It was a strike to savour and one that earned St Johnstone a sixth consecutive victory and completed a hard-earned comeback after Michael O'Halloran had cancelled out Calum Butcher's opener.

Within seconds of his shock intervention, Millar had been buried under the kind of human pyramid not seen since the last of those cheap televisions disappeared on Black Friday. As he revealed, though, he was forced to scream at his jubilant team-mates to get off him before he passed out through asphyxiation rather than shock.

"I take a lot of stick from the boys, but they were brilliant at the end with the pile-up," said Millar. "I had to say: 'Lads, get off me. I can't breathe.'

"I think Steven MacLean speared me and the rest of the boys just jumped in. After all that time of not scoring, it just all comes out. I was saying to the boys afterwards that there is no feeling like scoring a goal. It has been a few years since I felt it and it was so good to get the winner in a big game.

"My mum and dad were at the game as well so it was great for them to see it. I am really pleased. We dominated the whole game and I think that is as well as we have played the whole season. We were punished on the one occasion we switched off, but I think it was a complete performance otherwise."

Saints asked an early question of Cierzniak with a Lee Croft effort that had to be palmed over the crossbar and O'Halloran sent a snapshot from the left side of the field just the wrong side of the near post after half-an-hour.

United struggled to produce much in the way of cohesive football in the opening period and it took until two minutes before the interval before things clicked and resulted in a goal.

Nadir Ciftci fed Stuart Armstrong with his back to goal at the edge of the area. The midfielder released the ball quickly to the onrushing Butcher - sent off in the corresponding fixture last season as United lost 3-0 - and he had just enough of an edge on Dave Mackay to place a low, diagonal effort into the far corner.

Mackay tested Cierzniak a little after the restart with a powerful 25-yard drive that the Polish goalkeeper was forced to turn behind at full-stretch with the fingertips of his right glove.

At the other end, Armstrong missed a golden opportunity to double United's advantage when moving on to a fine pass from Chris Erskine inside the area but put his angled shot into the side netting.

Blair Spittal got himself on the end of a Ciftci cross with 20 minutes remaining and should have done better than put his header wide from a matter of yards out, albeit under pressure from Frazer Wright.

He was left to rue his profligacy when O'Halloran took advantage of a rare lapse in the visiting defence to equalise with his sixth goal in eight outings.

McNamara felt Mackay had handled the ball earlier in the move and would become involved in a heated touchline discussion with the fourth official, Des Roache, as the home celebrations unfolded. Lee Croft showed little sympathy, though, when firing in a fine cross which O'Halloran, completely unmarked, sent bouncing into the net thanks to a well-placed downward header.

"Jackie is frustrated with the way things went and the obvious decision," said the United assistant manager, Simon Donnelly, at the after-match press conference.

"I have looked at it from a number of angles and it looks like it struck him on the arm, but the referee said it hit him on the chest, so where do we take it from there? The game certainly changed on that moment."

For all Donnelly's grumbles, it had been the first real example of United's centre-back pairing of Callum Morris and Jaroslaw Fojut, who overcame illness to play, being posted missing. In the end, they were central to their team's collapse.

David Wotherspoon and Steven MacLean had both come close before Millar capitalised on an increasing nervousness in the United ranks. He was allowed to run across the 18-yard line, trying in vain to get the ball on to his left foot for a shot. In the end, he performed a U-turn, skipped past Rankin and saw his right-footed effort bounce into the net.

For a man who scores almost as infrequently as Halley's Comet illuminates the night sky, the celebrations were everything you would expect.