CAMMY Smith has admitted St Mirren’s 6-0 thrashing by former gaffer Jack Ross’ Sunderland left the Saints players feeling mortified.

Ross guided St Mirren to Championship glory last season and subsequent promotion to the Premiership before heading down south to Sunderland in the summer.

The returning Ross receieved a rapturous reception from the St Mirren fans before kick-off in Saturday’s friendly – but was left smiling even wider come full-time as he saw his new side hit the Saints for six.

It may have just been a friendly, but it was a hammering that hurt, said Smith.

“There were no points won or lost against Sunderland,” said the striker. “No win bonus at stake or anything like that. But it’s a matter of personal pride.

“The old manager is back at the club and you don’t want to be putting in a performance like that.”

Joshua Maja and Lyndon Gooch netted twice for Sunderland, while George Honeyman and Luke Molyneux added the fifth and sixth respectively late on.

Smith added: “It’s not acceptable to be honest. We’re aware of that as players and the manager has made us fully aware of that, pre-season game or not.

“The only good thing about it is that we still have two weeks to get ready for Dundee on the opening weekend [of the Premiership season].”

St Mirren travel to Hampden tomorrow night to face Queen’s Park in the Betfred Cup, but performances in the tournament will need to improve drastically if any dreams of returning to the national stadium for the latter stages of the competition are to be met.

The friendly loss followed the 2-2 draw to Spartans last week in which St Mirren had to come back from two goals down before winning a bonus point courtesy of their penalty shoot-out success.

Alan Stubbs’ men were also successful from the spot against Kilmarnock in the Betfred Cup, but the shoddy showings against Spartans and Sunderland have really dented pride in the squad.

Smith said: “It’s a hard one because we were so positive against Kilmarnock, it was a really encouraging performance to start the League Cup group. There were a lot of changes against Spartans, but it’s hard to put a finger on what happened.

“The second-half performance wasn’t that bad, but we reacted on Tuesday night when we made a few changes.

“We didn’t get that reaction against Sunderland.”

But Smith insisted the feel-good factor achieved under former boss Ross has not evaporated with the changes at the club over the summer.

“No, it’s not gone,” Smith said. “What happened against Sunderland has to be our wake-up call.” The 22-year-old added: “I remember this time last year – and I don’t like referring back to it – we were beaten 5-0 by Partick Thistle [in the Betfred Cup].

“I know it was a totally different league we were going into, it was the Championship – but we went on to have a decent season.

“We have to take our medicine, react and go and get the head down and work hard.”