\n<\/p>\n
When Don Robertson’s whistle peeped – it could just about be heard through the celebratory chants of the 3,000+ strong travelling support – Valakari let it all out.<\/p>\n
The energetic manager was emotional, ecstatic and a little bit exhausted as he immersed himself in the post-match scenes.<\/p>\n
The supporters were chanting his name from the 80th minute onwards and a few of his players lifted him up like they will do with the Championship trophy on Friday night after playing Raith Rovers – live on BBC Scotland.<\/p>\n
He has masterminded what Williams calls “the most enjoyable season going and watching Saints since Tommy Wright was there”.<\/p>\n
Wright, of course, oversaw the landmark 2014 Scottish Cup win during his impressive seven-year stint.<\/p>\n
By no means does Williams’ sentiment diminish the cup double achieved under Wright’s successor Callum Davidson, but this has been a league campaign built on utter consistency – while the first 10 games were “totally brilliant”.<\/p>\n
“It’s been nice to have that feeling back, but I think the novelty would wear off after one season,” he added, not wanting to get too familiar with the second tier.<\/p>\n
Thankfully for those of a Perthshire-Saints persuasion, they can put their notifications for the Premiership back on. In two games time, their full attention will be back on the top flight. <\/p>\n
How do they reckon they’ll fare once there, though?<\/p>\n
“We’re in a decent place, better than we were last time,” Williams said. <\/p>\n
“There’ll be a lot of guys maybe looking for more opportunities elsewhere next season, but hopefully the core of the squad can stay as it’d be good to see them have a crack at the Premiership because they’ve done us really well this season.”<\/p>\n
That they have. Now they get to party just as hard too…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Don Robertson’s whistle peeped – it could just about be heard through the celebratory chants of the 3,000+ strong travelling support – Valakari let it all out. The energetic manager was emotional, ecstatic and a little bit exhausted as he immersed himself in the post-match scenes. The supporters were chanting his name from the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}