When you’re talking about ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’ moments for St Johnstone, Shaun Rooney is beyond compare.
Given he was only at McDiarmid Park for two seasons – and a first team regular for one-and-a-half of those – his is the most incredible individual player story in the Perth club’s history.
Rooney is peerless. Nobody has done iconic quite like him.
Two cup-winning goals, one in a semi-final, two in quarter-finals and a home and away play-off double to help secure Saints’ Premiership status have taken he of the beard and the back post header way beyond fans’ favourite status and into the territory of legends.
Combine those astonishing highlights with the less quantifiable talismanic qualities he brought to a football pitch and dressing room – and transmitted to the stands – and you can understand why supporters are mourning his departure to Fleetwood Town.
🎉 👑 | Shaun Rooney with the equaliser on Saturday 👊#SJFC pic.twitter.com/al9PeuxMbf
— St. Johnstone FC (@StJohnstone) April 25, 2022
But the cult hero characteristics and knack of rising to the biggest occasions apart, Rooney should not be irreplaceable.
In fact, there’s a possibility that Callum Davidson could get himself a wing-back even better suited to the style of team he wants to shape next season.
Room for passing improvement
One of Saints’ biggest struggles last year was passing their way up the pitch.
Rooney was very much included in that. It was the most glaring area for improvement when he started out at McDiarmid. It still is.
That development – if it’s possible for a footballer in his mid-20s – will be Scott Brown’s concern from now on, not Davidson’s.
Rooney’s Opta passing accuracy statistics over the course of two Premiership seasons show that this flaw was pretty much an ever-present when he’s been in the Saints team, mostly wide right.
In 2020/21, the season’s average was exactly 56%.
Rooney was in the 30s and 40s on more occasions (five matches) than he was in the 70s (four matches).
Season 2021/22 only saw a slight improvement from a similar number of games – 56% became 57.6%.
In seven contests he was in the 40s and only for one full game did he hit the 70s or above (Dundee away near the end of the campaign).
While Davidson got what will probably prove to be the career best out of Rooney in those never to be forgotten first few months of 2021 in particular, he was an inherited signing, the last made by Tommy Wright.
The Perth boss will likely look to bring in a Danny McNamara-type right wing-back this summer, with greater emphasis on passing ability than power and aerial prowess.
And he’ll want McNamara-type accuracy numbers.
McNamara contrast
In his half-season at McDiarmid before being recalled to London, the on-loan Millwall man made the same number of starts (22) as Rooney did last season, and two more than the total (20) he reached the previous term.
And their touches of the ball were broadly similar too.
McNamara’s Premiership passing accuracy percentage was markedly better, however, at 70%.
Only once (his debut at Tannadice) did the Republic of Ireland under-21 international drop into the 40s.
And, apart from a season-high at Rugby Park of 92.9% it was a tale of consistency in the 60s and 70s, compared to Rooney’s peaks and troughs.
You might think that finding another Danny McNamara over the next few weeks is highly unlikely. And you’d be right. Certainly in terms of the overall package.
But replicating the crucial taking-care-of-the-ball facet of his game is certainly achievable.
Drey Wright, for example, a reported Davidson target in January and soon to be a free agent, reached an average of 73.08% with Hibs in 2020/21 and 79.72% last season, with a lot of his football played in the wing-back position.
In Rooney’s absence, others at St Johnstone will need to rise to the occasion when a game-changer is needed.
But when it comes to arguably the most important part of the week-to-week right wing-back job, there’s an argument that Davidson can actually hope to make an upgrade as far as the team’s collective effectiveness is concerned.
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