May back among goals and eager for more silverware

"I don't know how I didn't win that."

Silverware - and occasionally missing out on it - plays a major part in the Stevie May story.

He was nominated for the PFA young player of the year award for 2013-14. It went to Andy Robertson.

All these years later, the 32-year-old is still not having it.

"Looking back now, 27 goals," he says of his own exploits in that campaign. "Robbo did brilliant - he's done even better since, obviously. There was a good standard of young player at that time."

Those days truly were golden for May. He has been through a lot and is now back among the goals.

Three for the season so far on loan at Livingston from St Johnstone, including his first league goal last weekend in a 1-1 draw with Queen's Park.

"It was nice," he recalls. "When you go to a new club, it's always about getting that first goal. You really feel a part of it then as a striker."

'Knee was 90 degrees, bent the wrong way'

It is a minor miracle May is still playing.

After his 27-goal splash for St Johnstone, the forward was one of the hottest properties in the Scottish game.

He was the inspirational spearhead, the homegrown hero in a side that would defeat Robertson's Dundee United in the Scottish Cup final to secure the trophy for the first time in the Perth club's history.

"Everything was just perfect," he remembers. "It was a year people dream of. Everything I did seemed to work.

"As a team, we had huge success. It was just such a great time to be playing for St Johnstone. It was like a story from a book."

He would get a move down south - first to Sheffield Wednesday then to Preston North End.

However, in a match away at Fulham, he sustained a terrible knee injury.

"I tried to nick the ball away," he says. "The defender just came in full force. It was ACL, MCL, PCL. So it was pretty much the full shebang.

"And there was a little fracture in there as well. It was kind of 90 degrees, bent the wrong way. It shocked me. You get the big swell, you know something is really wrong.

"The physio pulled me in and said 'look, this could be you done. It's that bad'.

"It's tough to hear. It's emotional. But I'm proud of myself when I look back to how I dealt with it and how I got back playing. It helped me grow as a person as well."

Livi 'essentially a Premiership team'

May would make a full recovery, although the number of goals did not flow quite as freely.

There was a spell at Aberdeen before returning to St Johnstone, where he would play his part in an incredible cup double in 2020-21.

The long mane of heavy metal hair has long gone, but the desire to rack up more silverware still burns as brightly as ever.

Livingston are second in the Championship, six points behind leaders Falkirk.

"As a team, I think we can be scoring more goals, which will lead us to more wins," he says.

"That's our aim, to try and win the league. It's essentially a Premiership team. They kept the majority of the players after relegation and brought players in who played in that league.

"It's about adapting from being a team down at the bottom to now being a team where the onus is to go and dominate the ball. We are having success at that and I think it will get even better."

• See the full interview with Stevie May at half-time of Greenock Morton v Ayr United on Sportscene on Friday, 8 November on the BBC Scotland channel, iPlayer and on the BBC Sport website and app.