By Alexander Cruickshnaks

Yesterday on a miserable evening at Hampden Park, Stephen Robinson and his players were written into the history books as they defeated Celtic 3-1 within 90 minutes to be crowned the Premier Sports Cup champions. St Mirren took the lead within two minutes, a glancing header from the day’s skipper, Marcus Fraser’s header evaded Kasper Schmeichel and floated in off the left post to send the Paisley faithful into delirium.

Celtic did equalise but the second half belonged to the Buddies and Jonah Ayunga scored twice to secure the cup and the everlasting joy of thousands of supporters. Before the game St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson had an emotional surprise for the players to solidify the belief within the squad.

Defender, Miguel Freckleton said: “We’d been on a tough little period before this but going into the game we got a draw and a win which helped us.

“We had a little moment before the game where the manager showed us videos of our families and it was just emotional and we knew what we had to do today.”

Freckleton continued to speak on how important the manager was to their success: ” Massive, when he brought me in he said we’re not just a small side, on paper we are but we want to win everything, we want to try and get to top 3 (in the league) that’s where we want to be, we want to win trophies and we’ve got a trophy now so we’ve got to just try and keep pushing on.”

The importance of that video of the families and the unity Robinson brings to the side was clear when speaking to multiple players, newly dubbed St Mirren hero Conor McMenamin said: “He (Robinson) talked it up to be such a big game and to capitalise on opportunities, they don’t come around often when you’re at clubs like this and you have to grab them with both hands.

“We didn’t expect it we just arrived pre match and there was a 15 minute video of all our families, mums, dads, daughters wishing us good luck and it was really really special. It shows you the work that not only the gaffer but everyone behind the scenes, we’re such a small club but everyone does a lot of work behind the scenes to make us players and we felt brilliant going out there today and we were never going to let that opportunity slip.”

And of course they didn’t, with the emotion of their families driving them on St Mirren seized the opportunity and seized hold of the League Cup