St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright praised Murray Davidson for leading from the front after the midfielder’s double ended a five-month wait for a home win.
Davidson struck twice before the break to earn Saints a comfortable 2-0 victory over Premiership bottom club Ross County.
The same player had netted St Johnstone’s previous winner at McDiarmid Park, against Hamilton on September 23, and Saints had only taken one point in seven home games since then.
Wright said: “You always fancy Murray to nick a goal after not scoring for a few weeks. He was excellent the whole game, he was all over the park and was one that led from the front and got us on the front foot from early on.
“Too many times this season we have lost the first goal. The crowd were very good, I don’t think they were big in terms of numbers but they got behind the team well.
“Here at times when you go a goal down it’s really difficult. We have good quality in the team but, when you go a goal down, teams sit off you and make it difficult and that’s when we have struggled at times.
“But we haven’t made any mistakes and we have defended well and, when we do that, we always give ourselves a platform to beat any team in this league.”
County captain Marcus Fraser hit a clearance off his own bar three minutes after Davidson’s second goal in the 40th minute and the visitors only really worked Saints goalkeeper Alan Mannus in the final moments.
They were down to 10 men by that stage after substitute Craig Curran received a second yellow card, for pushing Steven MacLean amid a row over whether County should have returned the ball to their opponents from a throw-in.
Visiting boss Owen Coyle said: “I never envisaged the performance after the first goal. I was looking forward to the game after the good work in recent weeks.
“We never created enough opportunities. We had enough of the ball but we got into some great positions and the quality of our passing, which has been really good in recent weeks, just wasn’t there.
“We never worked the goalkeeper, our two best chances came at the end when we were down to 10 men with the game petering out. So hugely disappointing, there is no getting away from it.
“We never did ourselves justice. Sometimes you have two or three players out of sorts but I’m struggling to give two or three pass marks from the standard we have been at.”
