Kirk's enterprise

The 20-year-old, indeed, appears an identikit of the modern day football prospect who engenders sneering among the po-faced and the pious. A flash sports car and blond highlights, in themselves, are forgivable. This is true, too, of the heavy-set 6ft 3in Ayrshireman being unable to cope with college digs in his youth to the extent he gave up on Hibs, whom the Love Street side will face in a Scottish Cup quarter-final at Easter Road on Saturday.

In addition, probably the one Scottish pivot who dares to perform stepovers committed no crime when standing on the ball, Andrei Kanchelskis-like, in an explosive encounter away to St Johnstone earlier this season. Claimed by some newspapers to have "sparked a near riot", this was tabloidese for the chutzpah having earned him the wrath of his opponents and their supporters, as well as a dressing down from his own manager Gus MacPherson.

But that Broadfoot is in the process of doing community service for the very real crime of an assault which left his accuser with a metal plate in their cheekbone is reason why his other footballing foibles would paint him in a horribly unfavourable light. One that is impossible to reconcile with the big, exuberant galoot of a Drongan boy who unburdens himself disarmingly in conversation. In so wide-eyed a fashion, in fact, he could be marked down as a gentle innocent were it not for him being found guilty of so serious an offence at Ayr Sheriff Court in December.

A custodial sentence seemed certain when Broadfoot was ruled to have been the transgressor after being set upon while watching his home town junior side play Maybole. Only his burgeoning reputation as the finest young defender in the First Division, and glowing references from MacPherson and St Mirren for their "model professional", prompted a lenient judgement.

This resulted in Broadfoot being sentenced to 12 months of probation and 200 hours community service and ordered to pay 750 compensation to the injured party.

"I have never spoken about it because journalists who have come on to me have this fixed idea of what I’m like before even getting to know me," he says. "Yet, at the end of the second day of the three-day trial, press guys were coming up to me and saying they would get my side once I had been cleared because they couldn’t believe what was being claimed in court. But when the verdict was delivered they didn’t want to listen to my side.

"They have believed stuff making me seem like an aggressive Ayrshire centre-half who can’t control himself. But if they took the time to see what I’m really like they’d realise I’m just a cheery guy who loves playing football. I keep myself to myself but that day the boy came at me out of the blue and attacked me and I just defended myself."

The trauma of the trial left his mum in bits. Both his parents, he says, hoped and prayed he wouldn’t go down while the nights of his court appearances he took to the gym to run off his anxieties. His club rallied round. MacPherson and, in the holiday absence of chairman Stewart Gilmour, the club’s vice-chairman George Campbell both "showed face" in court while all his team-mates texted regularly On the morning I was to be sentenced I did fear that I might be put away," he admits.

"I just said to myself that whatever the judge gave me I would have to take and get on with my life; let this run its course and work hard to become the best player I could be and so get everything out of my life I possibly wanted."

Broadfoot later realised he could use his punishment for rewarding purposes. He rejected the chance to "hide himself away" and do his community service with a unit collecting dog litter, which would have prevented him having to confront anyone.

"I chose instead to work with charities and furnish and decorate houses for folk who cannot afford, or are physically unable, to do so," he says. "I help people who need help and that isn’t bad."

As Broadfoot sketches in the details of his career, an altogether different picture of him emerges from that formed by preconceptions. With almost child-like naivety he explains how his love of step-overs comes from still taking a ball out the back door to practise tricks of an evening. He is contrite when recalling the Kanchelskis moment; the desire to entertain his own fans blinding him to disrespect opponents in an act that "will never be repeated". And, when it comes to him not having the stomach for sticking it out as a Hibs youth when lodging at Jewel & Esk Valley College in Portobello, this is literally the case. Which hardly sits with any image of him as a gruff, gadabout.

"The set meals would be junk, like burger and chips, and although I knew even then the importance of eating the right things I couldn’t go out and buy this on YTS wages," he said. "It was murder at the college. I was living with all these students who kept me off my sleep by partying till four in the morning the night before games. We were left to our own devices after training and, for me, it wasn’t the way to develop. It was the way to put on about a stone."

He has found the men and the means to allow him to develop since pitching up at Love Street in the summer of 2002. All bearing witness to the Paisley club’s creditable efforts this season appraise Broadfoot’s contribution with the refrain: "He is St Mirren’s best player by miles and the First Division’s best centre-back".

Ask Broadfoot himself about being in the finest form of his 90-odd game senior career and the beamer this elicits gives off the heat of a three-bar fire. His impressive consistency he attributes to the 15 months MacPherson and his playing assistant Andy Millen have been his tutors. His regard for them, the club and the supporters is why late last year he signed a new contract to tie him to Love Street until the summer of 2007. "As long as Andy and the gaffer stay I will keep learning my trade," Broadfoot says. "Because of their vast experience of playing at the back, I’ve picked up more working under them than at any other stage of my career. It has been brilliant and I am learning loads.

"Andy is next to me every game and talks me through. If I make a mistake, he’ll later show me on video how I can change. The playing side has become so much more professional. Even down to us training with heart monitors to assess our fitness."

Although a contemporary of Garry O’Connor - "As good a guy as you could meet", he says - Derek Riordan, Steven Whittaker, Scott Brown and Kevin Thomson, his starts for the Hibs under-21s remaining in single figures means next Saturday won’t feel like a visit to a former club. "Aye and naw," he says of this, "but not really. Seeing the boys will be good as I haven’t really spoken to any of them in a couple of years. You keep in touch initially but that always falls away."

As we chat in a Love Street lounge, St Mirren’s vice-chairman pops his head round the door and excitedly tells the defender who he has recently been in touch with.

"I have told Rainer Bonhof he has to come and see you; that you are the business," Campbell says.

When the Scotland under-21 coach does watch the Paisley club, Broadfoot will surely be on his way to making the right sort of headlines.