John O’Neill
returned to McDiarmid after shunning a summer move back to Perth. With only eight minutes gone, Darren Dods was controversially sent off after making little or no contact with O’Neill. STV’s footage showed O’Neill taking to the air before any contact was made. The ex-Hibee remained tight about the incident:"That doesn't affect me. I'm too long in the tooth now. It's water off a duck's back. Maybe they thought I made something of the sending off but I didn't. I got there first and Darren caught me after I'd had a bite at Paul Bernard. We passed Saints off the park and that's what won us the game.'"
Billy Stark commented after the match:
"We shot ourselves in the foot. We just have to bounce back. The sending off influenced the game in a big way and it was down to how the ref interprets a goalscoring opportunity. When we lost a goal from the free-kick we knew we had a difficult day ahead of us. They hurt us last year with winning goals from Kevin James. He's a genuine threat. Sometimes he doesn't even have to jump. But I have to say we didn't handle him properly.'"
Mixu is looking to next week to get back on track:
"It’s only three points lost and we will keep battling away because there is a long, long way to go. That has stopped the run of nine unbeaten games we were on but if we do the same again starting next week we will remain close to the top. The whole season isn’t going to go your way but we now pick ourselves up and produce another run. We were threatening going forward and we got opportunities which we should have done better with. We then lose a goal from a set piece and 2-0 with a man down makes it very difficult. I was confident about winning the game beforehand because of the way we had been playing but we’ve shot ourselves in the foot and have to bounce back again."