St Mirren 2 Dundee 1 St Mirren win the 1st Division Championship!
“St Mirren clinched promotion to the Scottish Premier League with a win over Dundee at Love Street. A late goal from Billy Mehmet secured the win but St Johnstone's defeat at Queen of the South would have been enough to send the Buddies up”.
Yes, I'm afraid it's another one of those picks that would have been obvious to anyone who has read my profile, though i don't think i thought that we would win the league until St Johnston's loss on that afternoon meant that we were safe, then Mehmet's scored to ensure a win against the only team in the league that we hadn't beaten that season, and the celebrations duly got underway. Apart from that, not much of a game really. Too nervous, and not being in my usual seat.
I think the first point where i thought that we would definitely challenge for promotion/the championship was just before last Christmas, when we went up to Ross County and won 4-0 (Unfortunately, the following week, we went to Dundee and lost by the same score). After that we kept our nerve.
That's not to say that we didn't falter, or the path to the championship was a clear one. St Johnstone were our closest challengers at the death, but Hamilton Accies and Ross County were there or there abouts at different points of the season too. County avenged their loss with a 1-0 win at Love Street at the end of January, while Hamilton got a too little too late win (2-0), also at Love Street on April Fools Day. Had the god's been in a different mood, both sides might have been playing a Scottish Cup semi-final against each other at Hampden on that date. The match on April 1st was also the first opportunity St Mirren had to wrap up the championship, depending on how badly St Johnstone got on.
St Mirren got their revenge on Ross County with a 2-0 win on April 8th, which meant that a win against Dundee would take St Mirren over the finish line...
So since we have been up (in the Scottish Premier League), we have played OK, we need to strengthen our defence in the January transfer window. But on our day we have been able to compete, taking the scalps of Inverness Caley Thistle, Motherwell, Hearts, Hibernian & (on Boxing Day) Falkirk. We play Rangers on Saturday, where hopefully we will get something for the first time since 1991. Onwards and upwards.
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