Tuesday 8th August, 2017 at 9:58am
Usually I select a match in which there were goals, incidents, fast attacking play and plenty of talking points. This match had none of these things. In fact, I would say it ranks amongst the poorest games that I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I have never been a great advocate of live television coverage at the best of times and the 90 minutes at McDiarmid Park did nothing to change my opinion. Anyway, SKY TV had, in their wisdom, re-scheduled the match from Saturday 11th January, so there we were in Perth on a Monday evening. Such was the inaction on display, I’m sure that much of the armchair brigade would have found some excuse to abandon their seat in front of the TV to go and make a cup of tea or even give in to the wife’s wishes to watch Coronation Street!
St. Johnstone beat us on the other three occasions we met them that season so at least we managed to take a draw here. In fact, the Perth Saints went on to win the league by a country mile, while we finished in 6th place.
May I remind you of the team in this McDiarmid Park fixture? Here it is;
John Hillcoat, Callum Milne, Jered Stirling, Derek McWilliams, David Farrell, Gregg Watson, Steve Docherty, Steve Maskrey, Charlie Adams, David Moss, Andy Lyons.
There were some interesting names among the substitutes: Jim Slavin, Ian McCall and Billy McDonald. Ian McCall managed Thistle for a period of time but actually played very little for the first team. Anyway, not one of our substitutes was brought on during the 90 minutes. One would have thought it worth a try to break the stalemate. At least the home side tried something adventurous, something to catch the imagination of the crowd – they brought on a fellow called Attila Sekerioglu. You won’t forget that name in a hurry.
There is a little paragraph in one of the inside pages of the match programme: Welcome to SKY. We are pleased that SKY television has chosen tonight’s match for their broadcast, but, as some of you may be aware, Saints have never won a game when the SKY cameras have been at McDiarmid. Will things change this evening? We’ll wait and see.
Well, thank goodness nothing changed in that respect and we were able to bring a point back down the road.
Robert R.
