A SEAT in the directors' box on match days has given John Connolly a broad view of the game.

It is a position he takes up without having a significant investment in any one team even if he continues to accrue an interest in the fortunes of a former club, St Johnstone this week consolidating a place in the top six of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League. That it took an equaliser in the last minute against Dundee United on Monday night meant that the Perth side were made to scurry over the line but the scale of their achievement is one which Connolly has since measured from the comfort of his Ayrshire home.

A role as a match delegate for the Scottish Premier League means the 62-year-old is still engaged in the game even if he has been divorced from its most exacting pressures, his last direct involvement with a club ending when he was sacked as manager of the Perth club eight years ago. "We'll forget about that episode," he says.

It is a comment qualified by a chuckle, eight years having allowed the initial sting of his dismissal to subside even if disappointment lingers. His relationship with the club had been well-established, having helped them to a League Cup final and place in Europe from outside left, but Connolly would only take them as far as seventh in the first division from the dugout. He was removed in April 2005 and has not returned to a technical area since. The intervening years have not been spent idle and the former coach runs breathlessly through a typical day on the job. "You've got to see the match commander; you've got to see the health and safety guy; you've got to speak to the referee; you've got to speak to the managers . . . it's a bit of a juggling act," he says.

His conversations with Steve Lomas have related to matches so far but Connolly may be moved to go off topic if he is stationed in Inverness this evening. Having fixed a position in the top half of the league, St Johnstone are free to continue their ascent, with the prospect of a return to the Europa League likely to have piqued the interest of Lomas. The Perth club are five points behind their third-place hosts but have a squad that should allow them to disturb those clubs with similar ambitions.

"Any time I've seen them I've been impressed by the way they're playing," says Connolly, who would earn a Scotland cap shortly after leaving St Johnstone in a £75,000 move to Everton in 1972. "For a lot of the provincial clubs, if you stay in the Premier League then that's probably job done, so if you are actually getting in the top six you are verging on over-achieving in some ways."

It is the sort of challenge he might have envisaged for the Perth side when he returned in 2004. The silverware Connolly had collected as manager of Queen of the South – winning the second division in 2002 before picking up the Challenge Cup a year later – had increased his value as a coach enough to earn a return north, only for budget cuts to injure his chances of similar success at McDiarmid Park. The 62-year-old still bares the scars but is aware that it is an occupational hazard.

"I think we just need to look at the classic case of Derek McInnes down at Bristol City. He went down there and everything was being slashed left, right and centre and it didn't work out for him," says Connolly. "You try to move on and I did try for the first couple of years to get three or four positions. To be really honest, my ambition to go and manage again, solely manage, I don't think is there any more."

His desire has retreated but not surrendered; Connolly having since considered the prospect of acting as mentor to a younger manager, a position which would be backed up by his experience. He treats modestly his formative years as a coach – he took posts at English non-league clubs Gateshead and Blyth Spartans before returning north with Queens in 2000 – but the impact he made in Dumfries continues to echo. That has only increased in volume this season since Queens have already taken care of the second division title and will contest the Ramsdens Cup final with Partick Thistle on Sunday.

That success, when Queens overcame Brechin City 2-0 in 2003, still resonates with Connolly, too, since he had revived a club which only avoided relegation in 2000 after Hamilton Academical were deducted points. It was a bear hug from Andy Goram which left the greater impression at Broadwood that day, though.

"The Goalie was our goalie at that time and after the game Andy came up and hugged me, he thanked me as it was the only thing he hadn't won in his career," he says. "Even for a player of his ability, of his class and one who has played at the very, very top level of the game, he was just absolutely over the moon to have won the Challenge Cup."