JACK ROSS has urged his St Mirren team-mates to make a fast start against Hibs.
Saints are among five clubs locked in a tense relegation battle to remain in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League and Ross knows this evening's clash with the Hibees is crucial to their bid to beat the drop.
The Paisley outfit have not won in the le
ague in 2009 and went down 2-1 to Rangers in their latest SPL defeat last Wednesday.
Rangers cruised into a two-goal lead inside the opening 20 minutes at the new St Mirren Park. And, although Gus MacPherson's side came back into the clash with a spirited second-half display and halved the deficit through an Andy Dorman goal, Ross knows they cannot afford to give teams two early goals.
He said: "We can certainly take positives from the way we played in the second half against Rangers as we ran a good team very close.
"But we didn't start to play properly until we were behind and we need to eradicate that. Also we only started to play when we were 2-1 down to Inverness. So we need to be positive and to be brave right from the start against Hibs.
"Once we went behind against Rangers everyone wanted the ball more but we need to do that from the start.
"So we have got to look to make a fast start against Hibs.
"If we can go a goal up then we can make it difficult for them as we would then look for them to open up and that would give us more opportunities to score."
St Mirren have been praised for their performances this season but Ross admits points are far more important than plaudits in their current predicament. He added: "We have been talking about the performances being good but right now it is the results that matter.
"It would be good to play well and win but the results are the be all and end all just now.
"We need to turn good performances into wins.
"We've got two games remaining before the split and we want to go into that in a good position."
