He's annoyed us while playing for Hamilton, Hibs, St. Johnstone and Hearts, but it's arguably his loan spell at Morton that shows just how much of a thorn in our side Paul Hartley is. He was only there for a few games and only scored one goal - but it came against us. Flaming typical.
The soapless and hopeless claimed they had an injury crisis for this first match of 2000, but decided "the show must go on", in the words of Hugh Scott, after we'd cancelled our Boxing Day clash against Dunfermline for similar reasons. Of course, for most teams this would mean an easy three points - but this is Saints we're talking about!
Saints dominated much of the game but couldn't find a break through in the first half, with Ally Maxwell putting in a sensational performance in the Soapdodgers goal to deny Mark Yardley on more than one occasion, as well as Steven McGarry and Scott Walker among others.
Fortunately, we got a goal just after half time thanks to the rather bizarre offside rules. The ball was played over the top of the Morton defence with McGarry offside and the linesman's flag up. However, play was allowed to continue and Mark Yardley crashed the ball into the net, much to the fury of the visitors, who charged about the pitch to have a friendly chat with the officials. After working out what our the delinquents from Greenock were trying to say, the goal was allowed to stand.
Then step forward Hartley. With about 20 minutes left, he thumped a free-kick past the hopeless Derek Scrimgour that was followed by Andy Millen (where did he end up?) swinging on our bar in celebration. Hartley decided to run to the North Bank before failing to hide his delight.
After that it was all Saints, with Yards and sub Sergei Baltacha thwarted by Maxwell as he put in the game of his life to ensure the wee diddy team took a point from the big boys.
Not the best start to the new millennium then, but at least we didn't lose. Fortunately it was back to a normal Saturday game next time out, with Airdrie coming to Paisley just five days after this local derby.