Paul Paton’s summer holidays didn’t even amount to a fortnight.
But that hasn’t stopped the St Johnstone midfielder counting down the days to the new season like a child with an advent calendar.
The Perth men have been as professional as you would expect them to be in the friendlies arranged to bridge the gap between their Europa League matches and the start of the league campaign.
But Paton has admitted that they are no substitute for the real thing.
“Now that we’re not in Europe we’re desperate to get going again,” said the former Dundee United captain.
“You want to play real games. The next two weeks can’t go past quickly enough.
“I’ve never had a gap like this in my career.
“Ever since the Trakai defeat I’ve been chalking the days off one by one. It’s dragging. Other teams are playing the Betfred Cup but we don’t feel as if our season has started.
“We’ll be sharp when we start at Kilmarnock. The boys are raring to go.
“We feel we can have another good season and we’ll be glad we’ve not had to play the group games when the draw for the next round is made.”
Paton added: “We’ve had a few games after we were knocked out of Europe and we’ve won them, which has been nice.
“The boys were great against Sunderland and then we beat Rangers’ strongest team with a changed side. And we’ve beaten Hartlepool at the weekend as well.
“I don’t think we’ve conceded many goals and we’ll take a lot of confidence from that.
“But it was a major disappointment to go out and have to wait so long for another competitive game.
“We still feel that we’re a better side than Trakai. But you have to give them credit for beating us and getting through another round. It would be nice to see them get to the group stages now.
“We’re over the defeat – the last couple of performances show that. You have to move on.
“But we can’t wait for the real stuff to get going again.”
Paton was just returning from international duty with Northern Ireland when his team-mates were reconvening for the start of pre-season training.
“The manager gave myself and Alan (Mannus) an extra week off,” he said.
“I missed Largs and joined up with a couple of days left at St Andrews. I think it was a total of 12 days I was off.
“There was a week at the end of the season but I was in the gym every day on holiday because I had the Northern Ireland games coming up.
“We had a few days in Turkey to get accustomed to the heat and then we flew to Azerbaijan. It was mad. Baku was a lovely place and you can understand why Andy Halliday has gone there.
“It was a good experience and good to get my fifth cap as well.
“You make a big sacrifice but at the end of the career it’s things like that which will give me a lot of pride.
“It was hard and it became even harder when we were put out of Europe so early.
“It is what it is and now we have to look forward to the league.
“And I’m sure he (Wright) will manage our time well through the rest of the season.”
