Loan striker Joe Gormley has decided to quit St Johnstone and full-time football altogether.
Courier Sport understands that the Northern Irishman has returned home and informed both Saints and his parent club Peterborough United that he wants his contracts ripped up.
The deal with the Perth side runs out in January but he had 18 months left with The Posh.
A serious knee injury that wiped out his first season at Peterborough and a failure to take to a full-time professional career, as well as life away from his homeland, is thought to have led to his decision at what should be the peak of his career.
Reports from Northern Ireland suggest the 26-year-old, who Saints boss Tommy Wright rated as a top class natural goalscorer, is currently training with former club Cliftonville.
Decisions like Gormley’s are rare in the modern game and paperwork will need to be completed before he is free to sign with a part-time team across the water.
He cost Peterborough £50,000 after scoring 122 goals in 183 matches for Cliftonville.
Gormley failed to make an impression at all at McDiarmid Park, starting just one game – the Betfred Cup quarter-final at Pittodrie.
Reaching full match fitness proved to be a problem, and he also broke his nose.
Meanwhile, Saints defender Tam Scobbie continued his comeback in yesterday’s under-20s match against Inverness.
He played for an hour in the development side’s clash with Rangers last week.
There was also good news on Keith Watson’s progress.
“We’ll see how Tam is after the Inverness game,” he said.
“We have arranged a closed doors game against East Fife next week as
well, so hopefully we’ll get Keith some game time there.”
Murray Davidson will find out later this week how long his ankle injury will keep him out for.
“Murray is going to see a specialist on Thursday to look at his ankle so we can’t put a time frame on that yet,” Wright reported. “But it will be a number of weeks he’s out for.
“It’s good to have Chris Millar back, he missed out at the weekend because we didn’t want to have him playing two games in such a short space of time.
“But he came through the Rangers game fine so that’s good.”
