Manager Tom Hendrie, appointed at the end of 1998, had already achieved promotion with Alloa and Berwick, but no one expected anything like that in his first full season at Saints. He did like his teams to attack and for this first game, the lanky Baltacha - normally a defender, midfielder or needed anything but a striker, was pushed up front to partner Tom Brown and Steven McGarry.
Saints had chances in the first half and failed to take them, while former Saint Russell Kelly was booed when he came on as a sub. Early in the second half Ayr took an undeserved lead, with another ex Saint - Alex Bone - putting them in front. The useless eejit could hardly score for us but seemed to enjoy scoring against us for the numerous teams he went on to play for!
Things hotted up just after the hour mark when Barry Prenderville was sent off for a shocking challenge on Hugh Murray. Red cards would be a common theme over the coming months, and not always for the opposition. Shortly after the sending off, Saints drew level when United keeper Thomas Gill could only parry a Brown shot into the air and it comically looped down into the net behind him.
Saints went pushing for a winner, with the much maligned Mark Yardley coming off the bench but failing to find the back of the net. In the end, we had to settle for a point - and unless we got things sorted up front it would be a common occurrence over the coming months.
Ayr had shown our former players were quite handy for goals - perhaps what we needed to do was bring back an old favourite...