Alan Mannus has plenty of reasons to not let his form slip this season.
There’s the now annual incentive at St Johnstone of trying to get into the top six, qualify for Europe and go deep into the cup competitions.
The keeper also has a young deputy pushing him hard for a place in the Saints starting line-up, and there’s the small matter of the Euro 2016 finals in the summer for Northern Ireland.
The latter will never be far from his mind for the remainder of the campaign, Mannus admitted.
“It’s a bit surreal to think that we’ve done it,” he reflected. “It’s an unbelievable achievement for such a small country and I just want to be involved now.
“I’ve been in the squad for the last 10 years so it would be tough to miss out for the finals.
“I’m completely focused on my football here anyway, but I want to make sure I’m in that squad.”
As for the competition that he’s getting from Zander Clark, who didn’t put a foot wrong after coming on for him against Dundee United and then starting at Pittodrie, Mannus believed that he would have had to wait longer to get back in the team.
“When I was walking up the tunnel after getting sent off I was thinking United are going to score their penalty and I might have cost the lads three points,” he recalled.
“And I was also thinking I’ll miss the Aberdeen game and I didn’t think I’d be playing in this one.
“Because of the result and everything, there was no reason not to play Zander again after Aberdeen.
“Until the manager was laying out the shape of the team on Thursday, I didn’t think I’d be playing.
“I was expecting it to be Zander and I couldn’t have complained if it was.”
Mannus couldn’t do anything to keep out former team-mate Gary Miller’s spectacular outside-of-the-boot 25-yard opener for Partick Thistle on Saturday. And it was the same story for the Steven Lawless volley that flew past him from a similar distance shortly after.
He said: “Is it better to get beaten by two wonder strikes or two sloppy goals? I don’t know.
“I do know it’s disappointing to not get anything out of the game.
“You would think you’d only get a strike like that once every few months, so to get two in one game is a hard one to take. I guess that’s just the way it went for us.”
Mannus added: “Gary’s a good player and it’s good to see him getting a game. I’m happy he’s scored a goal. I’d just rather it hadn’t been against us.
“He did really well for us in the games he played. The lads all liked him a lot. It was sad to see him go and I hope things go well for him at Partick.”
Saints squandered a couple of good chances in the first half but they saved their best for the second period, scoring early in it through a point-blank Steven MacLean header.
Liam Craig had a shot tipped round the post, MacLean was thwarted by a last-ditch Miller intervention, and there was a hand-ball near the end that saw Abdul Osman sent off but didn’t win Saints the penalty they were shouting for.
“The lads are saying we should have had a definite penalty,” Mannus pointed out. “They’re saying it was inside the box. But it doesn’t always go your way.
“I actually thought we started well. We passed it well and got crosses in. It looked like we’d kick on from there. But, whatever the reason was, we stopped playing as well, they got a couple of half-chances and then there first goal. The second one came quickly after that.
“Second half I thought we were good, scored, and probably should have scored another one.”
Saints were unbeaten at home this season and for six matches of the last campaign.
“We hadn’t lost here for a long time,” Mannus said. “It couldn’t go on forever but it’s still disappointing.
“We fought until the end. It wasn’t as if we were poor for the whole game. It took two wonder strikes to beat us. We’ll get ourselves going for next week.”
Chris Millar missed the game as a result of a recurrence of a hamstring injury, manager Tommy Wright revealed.
He reported: “He broke down on Thursday. We can’t put a timeframe on when he’ll be back. It could be 10 days, it could be longer. It’s obviously a concern he’s broken down again.”
Wright explained that Michael O’Halloran was a substitute because he hadn’t trained much through the week.