St Johnstone 0-0 St Mirren: Shaun Rooney provides spark of excitement in dull contest

It was the closest the action got to heated on a bitterly cold autumn afternoon in Perth where neither side could begrudge ending the day in midtable where they had started. 

Chris Kane was sent off

“That was a poor game and it was a really poor performance from us,” said Callum Davidson, the St Johnstone manager. “The positives were that Craig Bryson was excellent on his 35th birthday and we got a point.”

Other than the enforced swap of Murray Davidson for Cammy MacPherson, who couldn’t play against his parent club, St Johnstone went with the same team which had so stubbornly held onto all three points against Dundee United last week. 

That meant most of their attacking play relied on the unpredictability of Glenn Middleton and Michael O’Halloran - again flirting wildy between the brilliant and the absurd - and the willing running of Chris Kane. At least that was the plan on paper, with Kane and Middleton occupying the visitors’ backline and O’Halloran given the task of rampaging wing back. But given the wingers were hooked at half-time and Kane sent off in the final minute of the match, it is not one Callum Davidson will likely be calling on again anytime soon. 

St Mirren, meanwhile, winless in three, were boosted by the surprising return of Jamie McGrath from injury. Richard Tait also found himself in the starting line-up and the pair were key to the guests, the former a typically clever foil for Curtis Main and the latter offering plenty of bite on the right. 

With the changes in place and the players on the field, there was considerable bang to this game in the opening few minutes but this proved to be devilishly misleading. 

Less than ten seconds were on the clock when Ryan Flynn was caught in possession and Middleton smelled blood. Twisting and turning, the striker darted toward Jak Alnwick’s goal and forced the Englishman into a fine early save down to his right. 

St Mirren’s counter jab was just as effective, instantly going up the other end and winning a corner for McGrath which Main headed into the gloves of Zander Clark. After his heroics last week, it was a relatively subdued way to get his save count started but he’d later deny the same duo when he just about got enough on the striker’s instinctive shot in the half’s dying moments. 

But just as quickly as this game had us lulled into dreams of a Perth thriller, it descended into trench warfare, it’s spark lost to that halcyon opening few minutes as both struggled to find any sort of rhythm in a haze of niggly fouls and overhit passes. 

Craig Bryson showed some lovely touches, Alnwick had to sharply rush off his line to nip in ahead of Middleton on more than one occasion and Alan Power was, predictably, booked when a second nibble landed a little too forcefully on Ali Crawford.

Jim Goodwin

But by the time the McDiarmid Park clock struck 3.45pm it felt like some sort of divine punishment had befallen this little corner of the earth and fans, pundits, and coaches alike were bracing themselves for another half of their shared purgatory. 

Whatever great plans Jim Goodwin and Callum Davidson had had in mind, they just weren’t working. Middleton and Kane, while willing, too often got in one another’s way or played a blind pass in hope the other would be motoring into space only to find they weren’t. While St Mirren were marginally more fluid, that really wasn’t saying a lot. 

Mercifully, the urgency increased tenfold after the break, so much so that you suspect someone nipped over to Perth Cathedral for a quick bit of penance during the interval. 

Despite Davidson hooking both Middleton and O’Halloran for Shaun Rooney and Stevie May, St Mirren were the driving force. Main was key to that as he unsettled St Johnstone’s back three before being replaced by Eamonn Brophy but it was Tait who nearly opened the scoring when he was inches from converting Connor Ronan’s superb cross. 

That set the tone and for a time the St Mirren waves kept coming. McGrath sent a bouncing volley narrowly beyond Clark’s post while Scott Tanser’s free kick had a little too much oomph on it to drop down in time and trouble the goalkeeper. 

In truth, neither Clark nor Alnwick was ever overly troubled despite the improvement. St Johnstone, too, showed signs but - other than a couple of neat flicks from May - could only really point to a David Wotherspoon drive into Alnwick’s midriff as a chance of note as they failed to score for the third time in five games. 

At least there was some drama off the pitch when Rooney finally responded to some of the away fans’ ‘encouragement’ and nearly caused a storm. Not once, but twice and it said it all that the biggest cheer of the day was reserved for him by the St Johnstone fans at the end. 

“I think anyone that was here and even the most die-hard St Johnstone fan would agree that we were the better team,” said St Mirren manager Goodwin. “If we had got the first one, we would have gone on to get more.”