First league win for Saints' Kearney leaves Hearts aching

A SENSATIONAL 40-yard strike from Adam Hammill set Saints up to hand Oran Kearney his first league victory as manager as they secured their first win since the first day of the season. But for Hearts it surely killed off any last lingering title challenge hopes as they failed to score for the fifth game in a row.

The Paisley side took full advantage of a Hearts side who look short in numbers and confidence and have been unable to recover from the loss of four major players.

However, all the praise should be heaped onto Saints and 30-year-old Scouser Hammill, who followed up his brilliant opening goal with a cool finish to double St Mirren's lead and end the contest.

Hammill said: "It's always nice to score a goal like that, especially from such a distance. But as long as the team win that's the most important thing.

"It's up there with the best goal I've ever scored. To be honest, I turned and the space just opened up and in my head I thought that if I looped a volley it might cause havoc with the lights for the keeper. Fortunately that's what happened and it went in the back of the net.

"You could try that maybe 50 times and it will go in Row Z or over the stand, but it went in today."

There was relief, too, for Kearney who finally was able to celebrate his first league win since succeeding Alan Stubbs earlier this season.

He said: "It feels good. The journey our guys have been on since I’ve been at the club ... it’s nice to finally get something to show for it.

“We felt it was coming as our performance levels have been getting stronger and you have that sense of it. And pre-game I had a good feeling today was the day they were going to deliver and, to a man, they did.

"We’ve been on a run of bad luck and decent performances, but we haven’t had the result to go with it. Our lads have tried to deal with defeat after defeat and have shown character. Now we’re hopeful this will be a good release for them."

Hearts really should have been a goal up in the fourth minute after Steven MacLean peeled away from his marker to get on the end of Michael Smith's deep cross, but the veteran striker stabbed his effort wide and that was their best chance of the whole match.

And the hosts, who had hit the bar in the first half through Kyle Magennis, took a deserved lead a minute into the second half with a quite outrageous strike. Hammill had no right to even attempt a lofted snapshot from fully 45 yards out, but he walloped a volley towards goal and it looped over the despairing, backtracking Zdenek Zlamel, who looked slow to react to the impending danger.

The capital side's atrocious inability to defend was again dreadfully exposed in the 55th minute when even though Stephen McGinn scuffed his shot, the ball was allowed to travel to Hammill who placed a composed finish into the corner of the net.

Hearts saw an Arnold Djoum header disallowed for offside and threw everything at the Paisley side initially, but that soon petered out and that was the cue for the full 1,600 allocation of away fans to drift off into the Renfrewshire night. And it was a subdued Craig Levein after the game.

He said: "I’m fed up talking about the same thing and frustrated as you can imagine. We had plenty of the ball and created chances but didn’t take them.

"The problem is scoring goals and I feel they are all waiting on someone else doing it.

"When things are not going your way the last thing you need is someone to score from 45 yards."