St Johnstone winning a domestic cup double three years ago this week certainly has to go down as one of the great underdog achievements in Scottish football.
So you would think. But Saints stalwart, Liam Gordon, reckons escaping the dreaded relegation play-off spot on the final day of the Premiership season may just triumph that success.
The Perth-based outfit began the 2023/24 campaign with a severely depleted squad, so much that it was made up of predominately under-18 players. Then Steven McLean was axed from the McDiarmid Park hot seat in October, leaving the club five points adrift at the foot of the table.
Alarm bells were ringing but it was St Johnstone's never say die attitude to find important goals when they needed it that helped them pip Ross County to safety, on goal difference, following a dramatic Sunday.
Gordon, 28, has been at St Johnstone for almost a decade and he was eager to credit his teammates for digging in and cementing their top-flight status.
READ MORE: Scotland assistant outlines reasons for 28 man Euro 2024 warm-up squad
He said: “This season has been challenging, the last few years have been tough. I would say staying up this season has been the best achievement as a St Johnstone player.
“The success we’ve had in the past, being in the top six and winning cups - you don’t learn anything from that. When success comes it’s easy, but when there’s so much thrown at you all the time you have to dig deep.
“It has been testing but to share that moment with the fans at the end made it worth it. It’s been a long, tough season. It’s been draining and we have had so many things to overcome.
“On the first day of pre-season we had 12 players training and half of those were under-18s. We had 10 boys out injured for the first couple of months of the season.
“It was difficult, we brought players in late and in the League Cup games we had a really depleted squad. So things were tough but credit to the boys, we got people back one by one and everyone stuck together. Nobody ever gave up.
“It’s been tough but the one thing we have is we never give up. People can say what they like about us but the one thing about St Johnstone is we always have a never-say-die attitude. It’s the culture of the club.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here