St Mirren manager Gus MacPherson feels the Buddies deserved their win

"I thought we were worthy winners. I think you could see the attitude and the application from our players and no lack of skill.

"We've created chances. That's something that's been lacking recently. I thought today we created quite a few.

"We appreciate how difficult it is to win at this level of football."

Interview: St Mirren manager Gus MacPherson

The win was St Mirren's first in the league since 27 October this year when they defeated Hibernian 1-0 at Easter Road.

Crucially for St Mirren, victory over Hearts, which came courtesy of a first-half Steven McGinn goal, puts them nine points ahead of Gretna in the relegation battle.

MacPherson said: "We've found it tough at home. If we could just sort out our home form we could be sitting two or three places up the table.

"Trying to correct that isn't going to be easy, but when you've got a group of players giving their best you can't ask for much more.

"We told the players to have belief, be positive, go and show what they're capable of doing. They've done that.

"Hearts are a big, strong team. We could see that in the warm-up. Credit to our back three, especially - Potter, van Zanten and Maxwell. They stood up to that challenge and dealt with nearly everything that came in to that area."