St Johnstone’s Chris Millar says Saturday’s stunning victory over champions Celtic speaks volumes about the team spirit at McDiarmid Park.
The win sent shockwaves throughout Scottish football as Saints secured their first league win of the season despite the fact the squad had been decimated by a sickness bug last week.
The situation became so bad boss Steve Lomas cancelled the normal Thursday training session at Stirling University in a bid to contain the problem.
Even on Saturday, Murray Davidson had to come off after just 20 minutes when he took ill on the pitch and was replaced by Millar, who had only just returned to full fitness himself after picking up a hamstring strain against Dundee United.
He said: ”With everything that has been going on, it was a massive win for us. We were on a poor run and a lot of players at our club were sick last week.
”Everything seemed to be going against us but sometimes when your backs are to the wall you find something extra and are galvanised. I was lucky because I never caught the bug last week but our training was still disrupted.
”I was driving down on Thursday and I got the call to turn around but the result against Celtic shows it was the right decision to cancel training.
”I never thought for a minute I’d play such a big part against Celtic. I have been out injured but got back sooner than was predicted,” said Millar.
”When I got the scan, the results weren’t as bad as we first thought and because I am a quick healer I told myself I’d be back within two weeks.”
Prior to the Celtic match, much had been made of the fact that St Johnstone had not won a league game since March.
Now, having got that monkey off their backs, Millar believes it is onward and upwards for the Saints squad.
He said: ”We hope this can be the sort of result that will kick-start our season. There were a lot of changes to our squad in the summer and it was always going to take time for us to gel.
”It wasn’t until we were a few games into the season without winning that I started to realise the run stretched back to last season.
”The papers began highlighting how long it had been since we won and that added pressure. Hopefully, that pressure has gone now and I believe we have a squad of boys here who are good enough to go and compete for a place in Europe.”