ST MIRREN defender Sean Kelly admits he has been delighted to see John McGinn make such an impact at Hibs – but hopes his pal has an off-day when the teams meet this afternoon. The pair came through the ranks together and played in the first-team at Saints for two seasons before McGinn made the switch to Easter Road in the summer. They have kept in touch since, with Kelly pleased to see the rave reviews McGinn has been getting for his recent displays, including a man-of-the-match performance against Rangers last weekend.

McGinn returns to St Mirren Park for the first time since his controversial departure at the end of last season. Kelly will be happy to be reunited with him but hopes then to ruin the midfielder’s day by helping Saints to their first home league win of the season.

He said: “John’s one of my best mates so it’s been good to see how well he’s been doing at Hibs. I speak or text to him every week and he seems to be getting a lot of praise which is good to see. I just hope he is off his game this afternoon!

“It will be strange for him coming back to St Mirren having spent so many years here but I think he’s looking forward to it. It will be interesting to see if he gets some stick from our fans! But it’s the same as anywhere when a former player goes back to his old club. That’s just part of the game.”

St Mirren go into today’s game on the back of successive defeats to Rangers and Falkirk, and desperate for points to try to move away from the bottom of the table. Kelly added: “We played well against Rangers but we still got no points for it. So it was a good performance but we got nothing to show for it. The Falkirk game was then bitterly disappointing. We just didn’t turn up. I know we had Jack Baird and Craig Reid sent off but those decisions weren’t what cost us. It was how we played in the first half that did for us and we need to put that right.

“The season, overall, hasn’t been good enough. We had come down from the league above hoping to maybe go straight back up so we need to get a run of results together soon as we can’t afford to drop too many more points.”