St Mirren manager Jim Goodwin has challenged his players to clinch seventh place in the Scottish Premiership after missing out on a spot in the top six in agonising fashion.
The concession of a last-minute goal to Hamilton’s Kyle Munro, combined with St Johnstone’s win over Ross County, saw the Paisley side fall two goals short of a place in the top half of the table for the post-split fixtures.
Seventh is now the highest St Mirren can finish this season and Goodwin wants his players to recover from this setback to end the campaign strongly.
He said: “It’s a real sore one for us missing out on the top six. We’re now battling it out for that seventh place and that’s got to be the mindset now.
“It will take a couple of days to get over this no doubt, having come close to doing it. But we’ll have Sunday and Monday off to get a few days away from each other.
“Then we’ll come back in, dust ourselves down and try to finish seventh. That would still be a good achievement although not what we set out to do.
“We’re back at Hamilton in a couple of weeks’ time so hopefully we can go on a good Scottish Cup run as well.”
Accies boss Brian Rice praised Munro for bouncing back from a poor individual performance against Livingston in their previous match.
Rice said: “The young lad Kyle who scored the goal was possibly at fault for a goal or two last week, but it just shows you the character of the kid.
“He has come on today, put in a fantastic cross in that we could have scored from and then got the equaliser.
“That’s what I want: people not taking things personally, just coming in and working hard. That kid typifies a week in football.
“I spoke to him and showed him where he went wrong last week. It is my job to make the young ones better and it has obviously worked, eh?”
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