St Johnstone boss Craig Levein savoured an “intoxicating” finale after striker Chris Kane put him through the wringer before scoring a stoppage-time winner against faltering St Mirren.
The Perth side eked out a hard-fought 1-0 victory in the dying moments when the forward forced home the rebound after his initial penalty had been saved by Zach Hemming.
Levein, who suffered a heart attack while manager of Hearts in 2018, joked that Kane put his health at risk once more by failing to score at the first attempt.
“I don’t think he knows I had a heart attack five years ago,” smiled the Saints boss. “Honestly, just put the ball in the net, you know what I mean?
“But all credit to him. He stepped up and took the penalty and then put the rebound in.”
Levein took the reins at Saints last month after four years out of front-line management and he admitted the dramatic ending to Wednesday’s tightly-contested clash reminded him why he was so keen to get back involved.
“It’s a drug,” he said. “I’ve gone from down here to up there in a quick space of time. There’s something intoxicating about it.
“I honestly didn’t know Chris was going to take it – I thought it was going to be Graham (Carey).
“The last thing I’d have wanted was a dispute who was on it. Graham was a good team-mate in that situation and didn’t create any hassle.”
Levein was pleased with the spirit his team showed as they climbed to 10th in the table.
“I thought it was fairly scrappy match at times,” he said. “It was a bit bitty.
“In spells we had a wee bit of control in the game then it would fall away and St Mirren put us under pressure and our goalkeeper had to make a few good saves, but in general I thought our defending was excellent.”
Stephen Robinson felt St Mirren did enough to win the game as they suffered a third straight defeat. The fourth-placed Paisley side have now won only one of their last seven matches.
“I can’t believe it, it’s a hard one to take,” said the Buddies boss. “We’ve missed several good chances.
“We only have ourselves to blame. The game should have been out of sight long before they scored.
“We are in a moment where things aren’t going our way but we’ve not lost belief. I’m very confident we will get back to winning ways.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel