THINGS could be worse. The last time St Mirren travelled to East End Park, they had been languishing at the bottom of the Ladbrokes Championship for so long the players just about had a coral reef growing on their shirts.

That 1-1 draw in January still left them seven points adrift at the foot of the table. Fast forward to September 2017 and the Buddies arrived in the Kingdom of Fife looking to bolster their position at the top of the standings.

A 3-0 walloping by Dunfermline was not the result they had hoped for but fighting it out at the summit is far more appealing than floundering for survival in the murky depths.

The problem was that St Mirren never really got going while their defending and, later on, their discipline came under severe scrutiny.

Dunfermline, meanwhile, were worthy winners after a robust display of industry and invention that certainly soothed the wounds opened up by the loss to Morton the previous weekend when they surrendered a two-goal lead.

At the vanguard of Dunfermline’s demolition was Kallum Higginbotham who pulled more strings than the operator of a marionette and typified the home side’s poise and purpose with his sprightly endeavour.

First-half goals from Declan McManus and David Hopkirk gave the hosts a handy cushion before Callum Morris put the tin lid on affairs with a third early in the second period. A brace of red cards for Adam Eckersley and Gregor Buchanan compounded St Mirren’s woes.

With the welcome rejuvenation of these two grand old clubs being manifested in a healthy crowd of over 6,600 it was the Pars who surged back to the top of the order with this display of authority.

For the well-travelled Higginbotham, these are good times. The 28-year-old illustrates that well-worn football phrase ‘have boots will travel’ having had a number of moves and loan deals down the seasons but the Englishman had settled in nicely to life at Dunfermline.

“I’m the sort of player who needs to enjoy his football and feel loved at the club I’m at,” he said. “That’s exactly how I feel here, from the fans, the management team and the players.

“You can see that in my performances. Hopefully we can all keep playing like that because to a man we were fantastic. It feels amazing [to be top of the league] and I’ve said all along that I believe that with the size of this club it should be in the Premiership. We’ve been working our way back up and with the squad we’ve got, hopefully we can have a real push this year and get the club back to where it belongs.

“The crowd today speaks volumes for the size of the club. The fans come out in good numbers no matter where we play, even if it’s Buckie Thistle. It’s about time they get pay back with a bit of success and we bring back the good days.

“I wasn’t here when they went into administration but the way the club is run now is fantastic, not just for the first team but for building the future with the young guys coming through.

“The club’s going in the right direction and I’m just glad to be part of that.”

For St Mirren, it was a bad day at the office and the team captain, Stephen McGinn, is keen to wipe the slate clean after what he described as a “messy” afternoon for the visitors. In a tight division, the top six are separated by just four points and McGinn is hoping for a response next weekend when Queen of the South are the visitors.

Despite seeing plenty of the ball on Saturday, St Mirren’s dicey defending was exposed by Dunfermline.

McGinn said: “I’m really disappointed. I think it was just the manner of the defeat, we never got going.

“The way we’ve played in games recently, we’ve been very easy on the eye, but we didn’t get going at all, we didn’t have a rhythm to our play and it’s was just a really messy afternoon for us.

“This league’s going to be wide open, there are five or six teams who will secretly fancy their chances of winning it. Dunfermline were a good side last season when we played them and they’ve built from there. We knew how tough a game it was going to be and we’re just really disappointed in the way we played.

“The way we play, we win games comfortably but we’ve lost a few games heavily. We’ve talked about it. A defeat’s a defeat, you don’t lose any more points for getting beaten heavily and you don’t get any more points for winning comfortably. We move on.”

St Mirren have set themselves pretty high standards during their rousing renaissance over the last few months but they never reached those peaks at the weekend.

“We can be critical of one another and it can be heated but it never even reached that point on Saturday because there weren’t many players who did themselves justice,” conceded McGinn.