St Johnstone 2
Dundee 0
League (First Division)

Match Report

"They deserved to win it," said Alex Rae after St Johnstone had kept their promotion hopes alive with a 2-0 win over Dundee at McDiarmid Park.

"It was pretty even in the first half and I was generally pleased with the way it was going, we were quite comfortable, but to start the second half in the manner in which we did was shocking."

Saints took the lead within the first minute of the second half, a ball down the right found Peter McDonald and he held it up well before feeding it to Jason Scotland who had a simple task in netting. Saints were two up just before the hour mark when the ball fell to Martin Hardie from a corner and the former Partick man lashed it high into the net.

Paul Dixon picked up two bookings in the space of a minute late on as Dundee failed to make any real impression on the home defence, Dyron Daal's volley over the bar midway through the second half and Paul McHale's angled shot just wide of the target being their noteworthy attempts at goal. only

There was a nasty looking clash late on in which sub Danny Griffin and giant central defender Kevin James lay grounded after their heads collided. Griffin was up and ready to continue quickly but the lengthy attention given to James seemed to indicate a serious injury. Thankfully it was confirmed post match that he had suffered nothing worse than concussion.

Rae called losing a simple goal so soon after half-time "Unacceptable" saying, "It was a straight ball and we probably had about nine or ten players in our own half, so to concede a goal after thirty seconds of the half was unacceptable. It gave them the momentum and we never recovered. We don't seem to have enough leadership qualities throughout the team to get us back into the game."

"When you go a goal down you're looking for someone to inspire your team and we didn't have too many of them around. When you look at their team they have experience in key areas, I thought McDonald up front did great for them, him and Hardie have experience and that's something they have right through their team we don't seem to have than, and hopefully we can add some of that in the summer, we're just trying to identify who we want with the money we have available.

"After being relatively happy with the first half, in the second we just caved in, and that's the disappointing thing, I can tolerate getting beat, but when you are looking for people to roll up their sleeves then it wasn't there."

"I've not complaints with Dixon's sending off, it was a bit of inexperience, he's just been booked, I think it was two bookings in a minute if it was even that. He's going to have to learn he's been great for us but he'll have a suspension now."

Match report written by Dundee Matchday Programme