Semi-finals for St Johnstone fall broadly into three categories.
There is the sliver that were won. The sparkling, cherished trinity.
The lost ones are the biggest body of work, of course, a mixture of Old Firm beatings that were predicted then duly delivered and more winnable contests when Saints’ best might well have been good enough but wasn’t produced.
Somewhere in the middle you can place Tynecastle, 2007.
You’ll find supporters and players who will claim that Dundee United didn’t deserve to knock Alex Totten’s men out of the Scottish Cup in 1991, while losing in a penalty shoot-out, as Derek McInnes’s 2008 side did against Rangers, always leaves an unjust aftertaste with the vanquished.
However, there is one indisputable ‘the better team lost’ semi that stands out from the rest, and it was against this weekend’s Betfred Cup opponents, Hibs.
When John Collins, whose vanity, his critics will suggest, goes before him, admits that the match “didn’t do much for my grey hairs” you’ve got all the proof you need that Saints were the victims of painful footballing misfortune.
The manager in the opposite dugout that night certainly doesn’t need any persuading of the fact.
“John was always fair,” said Owen Coyle. “I remember he said to me after the game: ‘Coyley, what a performance that was – I don’t know how we got through’. He wasn’t patronising us, it was an honest assessment of the game that anybody watching would have agreed with.
“Nine times out of 10 we’d have found ourselves in the final. You need luck in a semi-final – and you need to capitalise on it. Hibs got it, and they certainly capitalised on it, because they went on to win the final.”
When you look at the names in the Saints team, actually the squad, that Coyle had assembled at McDiarmid Park it probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that they had Collins reaching for the Grecian 2000.
Put it this way, Hearts wouldn’t be the favourites to win the modern-day Championship if you put this group up against them. The mystery is that Saints had let Gretna build up a double figures lead in the promotion race by the time this cup tie came around.
Kevin James and Allan McManus were a commanding duo at centre-back, with a young Steven Anderson their deputy. Martin Hardie, Simon Mensing and Derek McInnes provided the essential combativeness to thrive in the Scottish second tier or, for that matter, the top flight. And the silk to go with the steel came from Paul Sheerin and Goran Stanic, two classy ball players.
Up front, Steven Milne was injured but Jason Scotland and Peter MacDonald is a strike-partnership most teams in the current Premiership, Saints included, would take their chances with.
Coyle knew the Scottish leagues inside out and he had a chairman who trusted his judgment. It was a potent combination. Recruitment, scatter-gun and largely anti-climactic under his predecessor John Connolly, had become efficient and fruitful.
“When I came in to St Johnstone they were third bottom of the First Division and were nearly relegated,” said Coyle, currently managing Jamshedpur in the Indian Super League. “So there was a huge job to do.
“I had such a wonderful chairman who backed me as a young manager. Geoff (Brown) was just different class – a football man who would let you make a mistake if you learned from it and was always there to give you support.
“Anybody who works at St Johnstone will tell you what a brilliant club it is and how fantastic the people are to work for. And the supporters get behind their team and have a real passion for their club.
“Bit by bit were started to put it all together. We were building a very good team.
“For that semi-final we were full of confidence. We’d beaten Dundee United well (3-0) and, of course, we’d won at Ibrox (2-0).
“Results like that do wonders for the players’ confidence. Everybody buys into what you’re doing.
“We played on the front foot and went out to win games – that was the message going into that Hibs match. Just because it was a semi-final, we weren’t going to change the way we played.
“We felt we could win. As it turned out, we were by far the better team.”
Coyle recalls his team selection being a relatively straight forward one.
“Savo had scored both goals in the quarter-final against Rangers but was out injured so Peaso played with Jason up front,” he said. “Simon played on the right, Del sat pulling the strings.
“We had a really good mix and balance.
“Paul Sheerin was such an elegant player, big Hardie could do everything – score a goal, tackle, win headers – and Simon was very underrated. He could play anywhere for you – and did.
“Our strikers were all Premier League players. Peaso and Jason were quality forwards, as was Savo.
“Jason went on to prove it in England but I’ve got to say, if Peaso hadn’t picked up the injuries that he did, he’d have played at the highest level in Scotland – as a top striker – all his days or gone down to England.
“He had a bit of everything. Everybody knows he’s a great character but as a footballer he had an unbelievable turn. I’d like to think I’ve always had a good eye for a striker and in all my years in football I’ve never seen anyone with a turn with the ball as good as Peaso’s.
“He could finish with right foot and left foot.
“They were all good individuals but, most importantly, they were team players.”
They didn’t make a very good start, though.
Saints fell a goal behind when Ivan Sproule’s cut-back was finished from close range by Steven Fletcher with just three minutes on the clock.
That usually means big team takes control, small team remembers its place.
Not on this occasion. Not after Saints found their rhythm.
James was a lighthouse set-piece target who was picked out time and time again and from open play, Scotland was the outstanding individual performer on the tight Tynecastle pitch, mixing the sort of powerful hold-up technique and elusive penalty box instincts Chris Kane, or whoever leads the line for Saints on Saturday evening, will aspire to emulate.
Scotland scored the equaliser with 15 minutes left and Hibs were hanging on for extra-time by the end of the 90.
If goalkeeper Kevin Cuthbert could have one moment of his career back, it may well be the David Murphy free-kick he let squeeze past him at his right-hand post after McInnes had brought down Scott Brown. More Saints pressure didn’t yield another equaliser and Abdessalam Benjelloun scored a breakaway third at the death.
“Hibs were a good team, playing in a higher division and were quite rightly the favourites,” said Coyle.
“We obviously made the players aware of where they were dangerous but it was more about what we could do that I tried to put across to them. If somebody’s better than you, you have to accept that. But what you don’t want to do is go into a game and under-perform.
“I knew that if we played to our maximum and got the ball down to play, we’d have a real chance.
“I don’t need to watch the game back to be reminded of the number of chances we missed that night.
“Jason was magnificent and big Kevin was unplayable at every set-play we had. They were just going over the bar, blocked on the line, deflected – everything except going in. It summed it up for us, it just wasn’t going to be our night.
“We lost a soft goal at the start of extra-time, let’s be honest. But that’s the nature of cup football.
Life of a goalkeeper
“The Cat was outstanding for me. He wasn’t the tallest goalkeeper but in terms of shot-stopping he was very good.
“There were plenty of other occasions when he saved us.
“That’s the life of a goalkeeper – if you make a mistake it costs you a goal.
“On any other day we’d have made the final. The boys couldn’t have given me anymore.”
As excellent as the performance was, the mark of this team wasn’t the standard they attained at Tynecastle it was the standard they attained a few days later.
“I always pride myself in picking myself and my team up after a disappointment,” said Coyle. “Beating Falkirk, an SPL team, 3-0 in the Scottish Cup on the Saturday was a great example of that.
“At Burnley after we were so cruelly knocked out of a League Cup semi-final by Tottenham, the following weekend we scored in the last minute of an FA Cup tie at West Brom to get a replay which we went on to win. It was similar.
“We were outstanding at Falkirk. It showed the character we had and, of course, we went all the way to the Scottish Cup semi-final where we met Celtic.
“We were brilliant that day as well.”
There has never been a season in the history of St Johnstone marrying pride and despair quite like that one. Two semi-finals narrowly lost as a lower league club would have been enough but then came the sickening blow of being denied promotion while they were sitting in a dressing room in Hamilton.
Coyle takes great satisfaction from the recognition Saints supporters give his team as the one which provided the platform for the glory years that were to follow, even if there were no medals to show for it.
“For a Championship team to get to two semi-finals is an incredible achievement in itself,” he said. “But we performed well in both of them and could have won both of them.
“In the last 10 minutes of the Celtic semi-final, their fans were shouting for the full-time whistle, which tells you about the pressure we were putting them under.
“And in the league, we were 15 points behind Gretna in the January. Everybody knows what happened on the last day when we were champions for eight minutes.
“Yes, it was undoubtedly a cruel season in many ways but it was also the beginning of St Johnstone’s rise in Scottish football.
“My older brother Tommy had obviously played for St Johnstone so I knew a lot about the club.
“I could remember the cup runs at Muirton – thousands packing out the ground to see Tommy’s team beat Morton who had wee John Spencer on loan from Rangers – in a quarter-final replay. And then that part-time side drawing with Rangers at Celtic Park. I remembered all those things.
“I wanted to give the club their credibility back first and foremost, bring fans back who had become disenchanted and make them fall in love with St Johnstone again.
“There had been a few down years but I wanted everybody to know what St Johnstone were all about again. People were talking about us for the right reasons.
“Everything that we had built, the managers who have come after have taken on. It was the catalyst.
“Del was the first then obviously Steve Lomas and Tommy Wright after that, and now Callum. Everything just kept getting better and better.”
And the bond between the 06/07 squad members remains strong.
“That goes without saying,” said Coyle. “When you have good people and good characters like that, as soon as they bump into each other after maybe years of not speaking, it’s as if it’s been a day.
“I’m still in touch with them all.
“Although we didn’t get anything tangible, it was still a very special season.”
Coyle is optimistic that a St Johnstone v Hibernian semi-final will produce a different outcome this time.
“St Johnstone are a decent side and I’ve no doubts they can win this game,” he said.
“Hibs are favourites for the competition but the way football is, it’s only natural they’re still going to be thinking of that last semi-final against Hearts when they were even bigger favourites.
“Let’s be honest, they were playing a Championship club. That’s what Hearts are at the moment.
“St Johnstone will be a tough nut for anybody to crack at this stage in the competition, I’m absolutely sure of that.
“All the pressure is on Hibs. The St Johnstone boys should be able to relax, go out and play and if there’s any justice, they’ll get the win we deserved all those years ago!
“You’re just hoping they get the breaks. I went to all the semi-finals that Del’s team got to. It was the same for him, the boys deserved better in some of them.
“I’d be delighted if they do it.”
