"WHAT'S it like to win at home?" Having seen their team recover from a half-time deficit to move into the lead, the Dundee supporters were not slow to taunt the opposition yesterday.
There was no response, the St Mirren fans either stunned into silence or busy racking their brains to try to come up with the answer. A home win? What's that?
The answer to when they last won in the league in front of their own fans is May 3 last season. This campaign, aside from a League Cup victory over Dunfermline Athletic, has been a barren one, 13 league matches coming and going without the St Mirren players picking up a win bonus at home. Including the draw on the final game of last season, this sequence equals their worst ever run from 1991/92, when under Davie Hay's stewardship they were relegated from the top division. Stuck in the play-off place two points from safety, they could yet suffer a similar fate this time around.
Not for the first time they would rue missed opportunities and poor defending. Having moved into the lead thanks to Kenny McLean's seventh goal of the season they found themselves pegged back through Gary Irvine's close-range effort and then behind via a deflected effort from Iain Davidson who was stretchered off late in the game. St Mirren would go on to create a number of other chances - most notably a John McGinn free header that sailed off target - without causing Dundee any real palpitations. They will now need to wait until Inverness Caledonian Thistle's visit on Valentines Day for the next chance to end their ongoing heartbreak at home.
Once again they had cause to question the decision-making by the match officials. Taking what he admitted was a "cynical view", caretaker manager Gary Teale wondered aloud whether the decisions to not flag Irvine for offside at his goal and the late sending off of Yoann Arquin were a form of retribution following St Mirren's two successful appeals against the red cards shown to McLean and Arquin in recent matches.
The former Ross County striker has only played in three games for St Mirren and been sent off in two of them. Having been booked early in the game for a foul on Davidson, he would receive a second yellow 10 minutes from the end for an alleged dive in the box. His stumble had looked fairly unconvincing to the naked eye but Teale, with the benefit of a television replay, was convinced his team ought to have had a penalty.
"The first goal was offside, I've seen the pictures back again," said Teale. "How officials can keep getting these decisions wrong beggars belief. For the sending off, James McPake stood on Yoann's foot. The referee has said Yoann has then taken another step but McPake has obviously done enough to put him off balance and he's gone down. I'm not saying it was pre-empted but I also felt his first booking was very soft as well. Was that because we had the red card rescinded last week?
"I don't know. That's very cynical view to take. But when you look back on it again you can understand my frustrations. And we can't appeal it either as it's two yellows. Decisions have cost us in a lot of games."
McLean was equally dismayed. "I think their first was offside and I don't know what the referee sees when he sends Yoann off, to be honest with you," said the midfielder, whose first-half strike from 20 yards had put St Mirren in a strong position to end their home hoodoo. "I was 10 yards away and I'm convinced there was contact but the refs seem to know best. That's been evident to us in the last few weeks."
Greg Stewart, who supplied the pass to Irvine for his goal, understandably took an opposing view. "Gaz wasn't offside. If anything, I thought I played the ball back to him and he was running so fast that he nearly missed it."
St Mirren's gripes aside, this was another positive result for Dundee. Since their derby humiliation at the hands of United on January 1, they have now gone five games unbeaten and are just a point off the top six.
"I'm delighted for all the boys that we got the win after going in at half-time 1-0 behind," added Stewart. "There's no reason why we can't extend that run against Hamilton at home next Saturday."
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