Inside every blue and white shirt there was a backstory waiting to burst out into cup final-winning technicolour glory.
The local lad in the heart of the defence who honed his football skills on pitches half a mile away from McDiarmid Park.
The left-back whose big move to England led him to unemployment when it was expected to bring him career-high earnings.
The right-back related to a St Johnstone great who has transformed himself from a player looking ill-equipped for the elite end of the game into a lethal-finishing talisman and cult hero.
The youngest captain in the Premiership who had seen his form desert him and had been chastised by his manager for a rash red card only to come back from a coronavirus lay-off like a player reborn and whose head would have hit the pillow on final eve with visions of doing a Dave Mackay.
The younger-still central midfielder who had Scotland’s national stadium as his stage to once again take a highlighter pen to the ineptitude of the SFA coaches who didn’t spot a talent that was hiding in plain sight, otherwise known as Perth.
The creative spark of the team in the form of his life who has thrust himself front and centre after years of being in the chorus line and was poised, along with one of his team-mates on the bench, to touch the stars as a double St Johnstone cup winner.
The veteran playmaker second on the all-time appearance list but whose timing left a lot to be desired when he broke his Saints service with a two-year spell in Edinburgh and was at last getting his moment in the Hampden sun when he must have suspected it had passed him by.
The centre-forward who has never approached prolific and been forced to endure the sort of terrace apathy that needed to be balanced out by dressing room appreciation.
And, of course, cruelly not in one of those blue and white shirts, there was the man supporters would have wanted to see out on the grass most, but was instead alone with his thoughts for a second final missed through injury.
For poignancy, there was no parallel.
So many emotive plot-lines. Take your pick. Choose a different one. Change your mind.
Maybe it’s the manager who has followed a colossus and emulated him within the space of just eight months?
🎉 The trophy is coming back to Perth! 🎉@StJohnstone's players get their hands on the cup 🏆 pic.twitter.com/RlrCGldK4j
— Premier Sports 📺 (@PremierSportsTV) February 28, 2021
There really is no wrong or right answer and it’s a game that has no final whistle.
Even amid lockdown restrictions that need no explaining, watching an obscure TV channel that some wouldn’t have even heard of until a few weeks ago, Saints fans forced to separate when all instincts were screaming at them to congregate will know that a Scottish football tale for the ages has been written.
The club that could win nothing more weighty than lower league titles and a lower league knock-out competition for well over a century has become the one to put the book-end on the sequence of 12 trophy lifts in a row for the club that won everything.
Now greater achievers than all apart from Celtic in the last decade, St Johnstone have ticked off both domestic cups within seven short years.
And they did it with the sort of performance that would suggest this young team under a manager just getting started might not be done with this cup-winning malarkey yet.
With the setback on his return from a calf injury denying Murray Davidson a place in the team, Callum Davidson had two big selection calls left to make.
The first of those was at left-back – Callum Booth or Scott Tanser. It was Booth who got the nod.
🔵 @StJohnstone have done it!
For the first time in their history, they're the Betfred Cup CHAMPIONS! 🏆🎉 pic.twitter.com/8WMYIgy6Ea
— Premier Sports 📺 (@PremierSportsTV) February 28, 2021
The other was whether to stick with Guy Melamed, who did so well against Motherwell last weekend, or go with Craig Conway, who had such a big influence on the outcome of the semi-final against Hibs.
In came Conway, which meant a tweak to Davidson’s formation and Chris Kane being deployed as a lone striker.
As was the case here in January, Saints started slowly.
The good news was, unlike in 1969 for the last League Cup final at Hampden when Bertie Auld scored the only goal of the game for Celtic with next to no time on the clock, they didn’t concede.
During those nervy opening stages Zander Clark did well to get a strong fist to a dangerous Julien Serrano free-kick dropped on to the six-yard line and Efe Ambrose shot wildly over when the ball fell nicely for him in the box.
The best thing you could say about the way the match was going at this point was Clark was on top form.
He certainly needed to be on 18 minutes.
Scott Robinson did brilliantly to pin his marker and lay the ball off for Josh Mullin, whose sweetly struck right foot shot was heading just inside the far post until the Perth keeper finger-tipped it wide at full stretch.
That the match was taking the form of a scrappy, second-balls encounter would have pleased David Martindale much more than Davidson.
Even Saints’ craftsmen like David Wotherspoon were failing to bring a bit of composure and subtlety to it.
Mind you, who needs subtlety when you’ve got Shaun Rooney in your team.
The big full-back earned his side their first corner of the game just after the half-hour mark when Marvin Bartley blocked his cross. And then from Conway’s dead-ball delivered to the back post he powered a header in off the inside of the other upright to give Saints the lead.
Robby McCrorie got a hand to it and probably should have kept it out.
For the last 15 minutes of the half it was all about winning headers and making block tackles to get into the dressing room with their one goal advantage intact, and that Saints did.
There were no changes of personnel during the interval but the start of the second period felt like a different game.
Saints were playing pass and move football and Livi were struggling to cope.
Just two minutes after the restart Ali McCann picked out Wotherspoon with a lovely cut-back, his shot was saved by McCrorie and the rebound agonisingly bounced off Kane and to safety.
Davidson would have been delighted to see his side play the match in opposition territory but frustrated that they didn’t have a second goal to show for their new found dominance.
The closest they came was a Jamie McCart header from a Wotherspoon corner that had McCrorie beaten but didn’t get past the broad shoulders of Ambrose.
There were three penalty appeals – two for challenges under high balls and the other for Wotherspoon going down when he tried to skip past Nicky Devlin – but none were given by referee Don Robertson.
The lack of strong Perth protests told you he was probably right with all of them.
From about the 70th minute there was a momentum switch, with Livi gambling by committing more bodies forward and Saints’ possession game breaking down a bit.
Davidson responded (astutely) by making a substitution on 77 minutes – Stevie May for Conway.
©️ A Captain's performance from @JasonKerr08, #BetfredCup winner.@StJohnstone | 📸 @ryanjohnstonco pic.twitter.com/6TpOMn0Jhn
— SPFL (@spfl) February 28, 2021
Saints had a rare counter-attacking opportunity on 82 minutes – a three on two – but Kane made a mess of it when he over hit his pass for McCann.
That was only thing he, or any other man in blue made a mess of from then onwards.
The defensive line had been magnificent throughout and held firm under a late and predictable aerial onslaught.
Clark didn’t have a save to make and the cup was going to McDiarmid Park.
As the most famous pop song to come out of Perth suggests, for those with St Johnstone in their hearts, this surely ‘feels like heaven’.
St Johnstone star Murray Davidson opens heart on missing Betfred Cup final through injury
