St Johnstone treble-cup winning legend comes out of retirement to score for Glenrothes FC!

With six first team regulars unavailable as they attended captain Callum Kinnes’s stag do, Davidson, 36 – who retired last summer after 14 years at McDiarmid Park - was persuaded to play in the East of Scotland Premier Division encounter at Dalgety Bay Sports Centre by his fellow Perth Prison officer Kev Smith, the Glenrothes co-manager.

Glens’ fellow co-boss John Martin, 39, told the Glenrothes Gazette: “Losing the six players was a big blow for us but we managed to get a team together by pulling in three trialists on Saturday morning, a goalkeeper and two central midfielders.

"I think Kev had been at Murray all week, trying to persuade him to play for us. I think he offered him a wee promotion at work just to get him on the pitch!

"Fair play to Murray, he came in and helped us out which was great, as he obviously has family commitments.

"You could say that Murray failed to get us out of jail as we lost! But he scored a goal for us. He is not long retired, so he’s still got it.

"We’ll say it was a one off just now but you never know.

"It was a good experience for the other players – including three of our under-20s who were drafted in – to play alongside Murray.”

Last weekend’s defeat leaves Glenrothes fourth bottom of the table on 24 points with two games remaining, only above third bottom Inverkeithing – who have the same points total but with only one fixture left – on goal difference.

Glens play a crucial home league match against sixth-placed Dunbar United tonight (Tuesday), kick-off 7.30pm, with their final 2023-24 league fixture coming at 11th-placed Tynecastle this Saturday with a 2.30pm kick-off.

With skipper Kinnes’ stag do now past, Martin said that he expects to have a large swathe of the men who missed the Inverkeithing match to be back in the side, while stressing that he doesn’t expect Davidson to be playing for Glens again.