It may yet be that, a few weeks down the line, St. Johnstone completely blow their run in, and end up pipped to promotion by Partick Thistle. Last Sunday, when the Saints overcame a two goal deficit at home to Queen of the South only to concede a late winner, did a lot to suggest that there will be squeaky bums yet down Perth way. But if Derek McInnes' side do hang on to top spot, they will return to the top flight for the first time since 2002. Note, though, that even if they win their last three matches, they will have the lowest points total of any side to have won the first division since the return to a ten team league in 1994.
This season's Scottish First Division has, like the English Championship, an air of "anyone can beat anyone else". Don't take that to mean the quality is high, though. The Saints are only 13 points clear of eighth place Ross County, and don't try to tell me that County are only five wins in a season away from being SPL material. It is a division where the hoof-and-hope tactics increasingly associated with the top division are universally employed. It is also a division filled, as all second tiers in world football presumably are, with players who just couldn't hack it in the top flight. Think Graham Bayne at Dunfermline, a lanky, hard working but technically bereft striker with just 19 goals in 4 SPL seasons in Inverness. Think Colin McMenamin, a division one goal machine for Gretna, for whom a phrase involving the words "cow's", "banjo" and "backside" was often used during his encounters with the elite.
The trouble for St. Johnstone is that McDiarmid Park is full of these players. There are the veterans, like keeper Alan Main (now 41), well past their best. There are guys like Stuart McCaffrey, a great division one centre back in Inverness who found that his pace did not compensate for his lack of physical strength and his inability to dominate opponents, or Kevin Rutkiewicz, an Aberdeen youth product who did not have the power or aerial prowess to make it as a centre-back, nor the pace or technique required of the modern full back. There are guys who are both past it and who were never, erm, "not past it", like Martin Hardie, who while at Partick and Kilmarnock looked all the world like a first division player trying to punch above his weight, and Paul Sheerin, a legend in the Highlands for scoring a penalty in the famous Caley Go Ballistic win, but who toiled in midfield for eighteen months at Pittodrie.
Last year, Hamilton got promoted on the back of a bunch of hungry players eager for their first chance to prove themselves at the highest level (at least in Scotland), with possibly only Simon Mensing having had some SPL experience. And they had the likes of James MacArthur and James McCarthy. Their predecessors at Falkirk, St. Mirren and Inverness had that same motivation, though perhaps lacking in the quality of the Accies' midfield duo. But while St. Johnstone definitely have a few guys who will be eager to show what they can do, one suspects that, assuming they hang on and win the first division, they will be a far weaker team than Hamilton were, and it will take a lot of investment for them to avoid returning to where they came from.
Considering how long it has taken them to get back towards the summit, though, good luck to them.
L.
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