Title winning days

How the month of May turned around.

Remember the feeling, hitting some form, winning back-to-back games against Rangers but still having the league out of our control.

VIDEO lap of honour

Sure they had a lot of games to play but after the McCurry-inspired 3-1 win over Dundee United we knew that Rangers would continue to scrape by and get the points needed to win the league whatever it took and whatever we did.

Our home defeat to Motherwell was so costly, if only we had won that, or beaten St Mirren or Hibs at home in December, if if if if.

And horror of horrors as well as losing the league our Seville experience was under threat from the most boring, defensive, miserable collection of anti-football as somehow Rangers had snarled their way to the UEFA Cup Final where all they had to do was bore Wee Dickies Ruskies to death, win on penalties and life in Scotland and beyond would be unbearable.

As we went to the final home match of the season we only had hope, hope we could beat Hibs, hope that luck would run out in Manchester and hope that they'd trip up in one of their three remaining games but with the season over for Motherwell, St Mirren and Aberdeen there really wasn't much to hope for.

A 2-0 win over Hibs delivered some more points but it still felt a bit empty, out of our hands as the players made their way around the park, not so glorious failure to a poor Rangers team or a preparation for celebrations to come at Tannadice?

Thankfully, oh how thankfully, it all fell into place, Zenit won the UEFA Cup, more Rangers points were slipped away to Motherwell then gloriously at Tannadice Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink's header brought us a title that we could only have dreamed of a few weeks earlier as a nightmare unfolded.

The summer has been a joy, complete pleasure basking in the pleasure of three-in-a-row, reliving the highlights whilst trying to blank out the scary bits.

Enjoy this VIDEO of the premature lap of honour after beating Hibs 2-0 on May 11, little did we know that some real celebrations were just around the corner.