It was a huge let down for the home side who were unable to find the net despite having the majority of the possession in both halves.
Craigan returned at the expense of McGarry and in a surprise change to the formation Paul Quinn played at left back while Hammell moved up the park to left midfield. The visitors kicked off and faced the Cooper end.
One of many first half crosses
It was clear within minutes that Motherwell were going to do most of the attacking and Clarkson had an early shot parried to safety by Howard. We kept the pressure on the South Stand goal and tested the defenders with a series of corner kicks.
An illustration of the flow of the game was evidenced by the six balls the St Mirren defence fired out of the stadium by the half time break yet we failed to carve out any clear cut chance. In fact were fortunate to reach the dressing room without loss as Dargo had a great chance in 44 minutes. He won a forty yard chase and had only Smith to beat but our man managed to stop his goal bound effort.
McLean gets a head to this but the ball goes high
Another warning sign came on 50 minutes when another St Mirren breakaway caused havoc before stout defending smothered the chance.
Sutton produced a couple of on target headers from O'Brien's crosses but there were signs of increasing nervousness as the game continued without any breakthrough. Both teams were reluctant to risk much in the way of passing movements on the bumpy surface and there were lots of long punts followed by sessions of head tennis.
Disaster struck when Dargo collected a long cross at the far post. He lobbed it into the danger area and after a bit of a scramble Reynolds seemed to release the ball to the delight of Thomson who had the easiest of tap-ins to bring the paisley fans to their feet.
Our response was to bring on Murphy for Klimpl and with five minutes remaining
Dormam produced a wonderful long range dipping effort to seal our bottom six fate with 87 minutes on the clock. That was the cue for thousands of disappointed Motherwell fans to troop dejectedly from the ground.
They missed a header from Hughes which had the defence beat but not the post. By the time referee McCurry blew the final whistle there would be barely 1500 home fans left.
It was not a good day.