St Johnstone striker Steven MacLean has admitted the torment of being helpless as the Perth side crashed out of the Scottish Cup has been hard to shake off.
The Perth forward was told by his surgeon, his manager and even his wife that playing on Queen of the South’s artificial pitch at the weekend could have jeopardised his career.
And in the end he agreed to be stood down.
But, in the wake of the Palmerston defeat, MacLean still has a nagging feeling that he should have taken the gamble and pulled on his boots.
“Saturday night wasn’t good because I was like a bear with a sore head,” the former Rangers and Sheffield Wednesday man reflected.
“I was thinking to myself that I should have just played.
“I’ve been told not to, the surgeon told me it’s a no-no, but what do you do?
“I don’t even train on it, so the sensible thing is to say ‘why should you play on it?’.
“I know it was the right decision in the end, but that didn’t make it any easier on Saturday.
“I wish I’d played even though the missus would have gone mental.
“She warned me that if I told the gaffer to play me she’d be on the phone to him.
“But I reminded her it would be my decision, although she didn’t exactly agree with that!
“So she got it on Saturday night as well. It was just a horrible weekend and I’m still wishing I’d just cracked on and played.
“But it’s done now and although I don’t agree with astroturf, there are no excuses.”
MacLean’s mood in Dumfries was the same as the rest of his team-mates – utter dejection.
He said: “The dressing-room afterwards was as low as I’ve seen it, because it was our cup and we were defending it.
“We’d experience the high of last year and expected to have a better run.
“No disrespect to Queens but we should be beating them, even on astroturf.
“But fair play to them, they deserved to go through and we had no complaints.”
MacLean, who will be back available for selection on the grass of McDiarmid Park for Saturday’s clash with Celtic, added: “Everyone was gutted because we let ourselves down and although it wasn’t from a lack of effort it wasn’t good enough.
“We might have got something at the end because there wasn’t a great deal in the game.
“But we didn’t do enough and good luck to Queen of the South for the rest of the competition.”
Back-to-back off-days are extremely rare for this St Johnstone side, and MacLean has faith that they will be on top form again for the visit of treble-chasing Celtic.
He pointed out: “Celtic on Saturday is a great chance to bounce back but it will be tough.
“One thing we do is always come out fighting. After the Inverness game a few weeks ago a certain player had a go at us saying we’d chucked it.
“The next game we played very well against Aberdeen and were unlucky not to win.
“So we’ve showed we can bounce back. We have good boys in the dressing room.
“We let a lot of people down last weekend, we took a great following down there and they went home disappointed.
“So the motivation is there to make amends for that. I can’t promise anyone we’ll win the game but we will have a proper go at them.”