Last week the Queen of the South goalie threw away a win for his side when he jumped over the ball, allowing Raith's John Sutton to score an equaliser. This week he made a few errors early on, and the hope was that Saints would be able to exploit it. The Queen of the South fans contented themselves with shotuing abuse at Saints player John O'Neill for daring to leave their club in the summer. They also played instruments (a crime punishable by death) and made lots of noise.
QoS should have been three up after half an hour, including one effort which hit the join of the post and the bar. The defence was once again awful thanks to captain Kevin McGowne. Stevie Woods actually had the guts to shout at him at one point, bout time someone did that. McGowne has been rank this season, and it was a blessing in disguise when he had to go off injured to be replaced by Kirk Broadfoot. Usually a Saints player going off injured gets a decent amount of applause, when McGowne went off there was sod all which kind of shows you what most Saints fans think of him.
Between McGowne getting injured and him and actually going off Saints took the lead when Simon Lappin's goal was headed home by O'Neill. I'd said to my brother that O'Neill would score (due to the QoS fans slagging him) and that he'd get booked for celebrating. Sure enough, he ran straight to the Queen of the South fans, one hand to his ear. Understandable, yes, but also stupid, and he deserved his booking. Mind you, I love the reaction of football fans. A bloke they've been given dogs abuse runs over to them and suddenly they turn from nice, innocent football fans to a snarling mob.
There wasn't much more action in the first half, the Saints defence looking much more solid thanks to the removal of McGowne. When the second half started though, Saints wasted no time in extending the lead, having scored another two goals before 5 minutes were on the clock!
First Brian McGinty scored an absolute screamer from a fair distance out. McGinty had a decent game, though proved he is not a striker. Lots of running about, lots of creating stuff but rarely in the box to do stuff. An attacking midfielder but not a striker.
Within 60 seconds it was 3-0. A poor back pass was picked up by John O'Neill, and after appearing to have pushed the ball too far he squeezed the ball in from a tight angle. Game over?
Nope. Despite Saints missing some decent chances, Queen of the South got one back with 35 minutes to go, thanks to some dodgy defending and David Bagan scoring. Queen of the South had a few clear cut chances to get back into the game but failed to take them. Saints had far, far more chances and failed to take them, either down to poor finishing, good goalkeeping or trying to set O'Neill up for his hat trick. O'Neill, McGinty, Gillies, Murray, lappin and Broadfoot were all guilty of missing. Murray and Gillies were poor, and how Murray got one of the man of the match awards is a mystery!
We still need a striker, and we should have been 3-0 down after the first half an hour, but in the end we deserved the three points. McGinty did well, as did O'Neill. Hopefully we can finally take something from Caley thistle next week. The last time we avoided defeat was around the turn of the year in 01/02, a record which needs to be sorted.