From Flying Kiwis.
There’s no stopping him these days, is there? Alex Greive is already halfway towards match last season’s tally of four league goals and he’s doing this as an impact substitute. Two goals in just 63 minutes of action this SPL term. Keep this up and there’ll be plenty more minutes coming his way.
It helps that St Mirren might actually be really good this season. They’ve certainly started that way, having won their first two Premiership matches, including the 3-2 opening week win against Hibernian in which Greive scored the 89th minute winner. They’ve also pushed on through into the third round of the league cup thanks to a 1-0 win over Motherwell last week but Greive was an unused sub for that game.
Against Aberdeen they were excellent for most of the afternoon, although a misjudged long curling free kick from Jonny Hayes did give the Dons the 1-0 half-time lead as St Mirren’s goalie watched it bounce and swerve inside his far post. However Greg Kiltie’s 59th minute penalty followed by Alex Greive’s sweet finish on 76’ had them deservedly in the lead in the latter stages.
This despite Aberdeen going to their trump card nice and early: James McGarry subbed on in place of Hayes after only 52 minutes (Greive joined the match on 70’). A rare kiwi derby in the Scottish Premiership – if that’s every happened before than it didn’t happen often (Chris Killen, Rory Fallon, Steven Old, and Michael McGlinchey did overlap to various degrees so they surely met each other at some stage).
The Saints were all over them prior to that weird goal conceded and they were all over them, with some reward this time, afterwards too. But they didn’t shut the gate behind them. Deep into injury time, James McGarry tried to line up a shot on the edge of the area. It didn’t open up for him so he slipped a square pass to a teammate whose own shot ploughed into the arm of a sliding defender. VAR. Penalty. Converted by Bojan Miovski in the tenth minute added-on. 2-2 was the final score. Thus St Mirren have to settle for sitting second on the table trailing Celtic on goal difference. It’s not the worst place, to be fair.