As soon as Steven MacLean’s penalty was palmed away by Vladimir Bushma, you could hear Scottish football’s doom mongers tuning up.
Hibs, Motherwell and St Johnstone all out of the Europa League before mid-August, glorious failure yet again, only Celtic left to fly the flag, our co-efficient will be knackered..blah, blah, blah.
But while there aren’t many positives to take out of our clubs’ efforts in Europe so far this season on the face of it, Hibs’ downright embarrassing 9-0 aggregate score against Malmo by far the worst, St Johnstone’s crack at the continent cannot simply be erased from memory on the basis of one poor result against the Belarusians from FC Minsk.
Having taken a 1-0 lead from the away leg in Grodno into the return in Perth, the stark fact is that Saints should have finished the job.
Apart from maybe Raman Vasiliuk and Vital Kubik up front, Minsk were no great shakes over the two legs and turned out to be a team of hatchet men hell bent on being as stuffy as they could be at McDiarmid Park.
Their goal to take the game to extra-time came virtually out of nothing and penalties was probably the best they could have wished for beforehand, but sadly for Scottish football that’s how it panned out and it was them and not Saints in the draw for the Europa League play-off round.
Put plain and simply, St Johnstone fashioned themselves a golden opportunity to progress over in Belarus and they blew it.
They blew it in the home leg by not putting at least one of the umpteen chances they created on the night away.
But no-one will know that more than Saints’ players, fans and officials themselves so what they don’t need is people on their backs bemoaning the state of the national game.
St Johnstone deserve much more credit than they’ve been getting this week and two away victories in Europe this season is nothing to be sniffed at.
Norwegian league leaders and Champions League regulars Rosenborg were put in their place over in Trondheim, and Saints showed great character to come back from an early setback in the second leg to earn the 1-1 draw which ultimately saw them through.
It was an adventure that took around 500 fans to Norway, despite the pricey pints on offer over there, and brought almost 8,000 fans out in the return leg on what was a memorable night for the Perth club.
Then came the farcical situation where Saints officials had to scramble around to secure visas for players, staff and the media for their trip to Belarus at little more than a week’s notice, source a charter plane and even pay to keep Grodno’s tiny airport open so they could get home after the game.
That was another adventure of sorts, although it was nothing short of a disgrace that Saints fans eager to see their side compete in Europe were denied an opportunity by bureaucracy and red tape.
But Saints put all that aside to carry out a thoroughly professional job in a hostile environment, and grabbed yet another away goal that looked for all the world like it would be enough to ease them into the play-off round and 180 minutes away from the group stages proper.
So it is only fair that people look at Saints’ Europa League campaign this season in a good light, even though they crashed out in the most heart-breaking of circumstances on Thursday night.
Scottish clubs have long relied on the: ‘If only so and so had taken that chance things might have been different’ get out clause.
And yes, it applies in St Johnstone’s case.
But at the end of the day the Perth club have had yet another taste of European football a much bigger bite than they might have initially anticipated and all the signs are there that they could have a decent season again domestically.
Manager Tommy Wright also looks to be a more-than-able replacement for Steve Lomas, and not only has some of his bold tactical decisions been vindicated but he’s demonstrated himself to be a breath of fresh air.
His rather restrained comments about FC Minsk’s ‘class’ in relation to some of their players’ overly physical antics during and after the home leg highlighted that.
All in all, in the cold light of day, Saints will probably be relieved in some respects not to have made the Europa League group stages, as the size of Wright’s squad would have made it difficult to combine challenging in the SPFL Premiership with jaunts across Europe.
We’ll never know if money would have been made available to strengthen that pool, and who knows what would have happened had they won through, but it’s all academic now in any case.
Saints must now regroup and look to try and get back among Europe’s big boys via the league route again.
However, there is one thing about Saints’ Euro adventure that must continually rankle the bean counters at McDiarmid Park.
Almost 8,600 turned out for the FC Minsk game on Thursday night and chairman Steve Brown must be asking himself: “Where are these people on a Saturday or Sunday?”
Even if half of those decided to return and get behind the team on a regular basis, imagine what that would do to a club like St Johnstone’s budget?
Sadly we’ll never really know that answer either, and sadly it’s a question chairmen of most clubs have asked themselves at one time or another.
For the good of the Scottish game, let’s hope it’s a question the high heid yins at the SPFL are also having a stab at.