Saints will come up against a host of familiar faces when they travel to Easter Road to face Hibernian in the cinch Premiership.
Jake Doyle-Hayes, Kyle Magennis, Paul McGinn and Darren McGregor all previously played with Saints, as did Hibs manager Jack Ross as well as coaching staff John Potter and Craig Samson.
And while Jim Goodwin expects both sets of fans to engage in banter around the subject, there will be nothing but respect between the opposite dugouts.
There is bound to be a lot of banter going back and forth between the supporters. We can't deny the fact a lot of ex-St Mirren players are currently playing for Hibs, but there's no grudge match as far as I'm concerned.
"I have a huge amount of respect for Jack Ross. John Potter and Craig Samson are also ex-teammates of mine. It'll be all professional as you would expect and there will be a handshake between myself and Jack. Me and Jack are on good terms but we will both want to beat each other at the weekend."
The manager knows the Buddies will have a tough task as they face an in-form Hibs side.
The Leith outfit are unbeaten in their opening five league matches this season - having won three and drawn two to sit second in the cinch Premiership.
But the gaffer is confident his team can go to Easter Road and make it difficult for the hosts.
"Hibs are flying," Jim said.
"They've started off exactly where they finished the season last year and they're unbeaten in the league.
"We're under no illusions of how difficult the task is going to be. We've got to have our wits about us at the back, but I do genuinely believe we have players in our team that can cause Hibs problems going the other way as well.
"That's what we have been working on throughout the week and hopefully that will come to fruition at the weekend."
Saints head to Edinburgh still searching for a first league win of the campaign.
The Buddies have been left rueing missed opportunities as well as seeing goals from Conor McCarthy and Eamonn Brophy controversially disallowed in recent 0-0 draws against St Johnstone and Dundee United, while Curtis Main also saw a strike wrongly ruled offside against Celtic.
But despite that frustration, the gaffer has seen enough over the past few weeks to believe the luck will turn.
Things could be so different," the manager lamented.
"I'm pretty sure every manager out there could say they should have a few more points on the board. I believe we certainly should have.
"The frustration for me is that we've had the ball in the back of the net in each of the last three games and all of them have been disallowed for one reason or another.
Conor McCarthy has goal disallowed against St Johnstone (Image: Allan Picken)
"We could be sitting on seven points but unfortunately we are going into this one off the back of two 0-0s. The positives are that we've had two good clean sheets and I felt we played really well in the second half against Dundee United.
"I think we are fifth in the league in terms of chances, shots and goal attempts and all that kind of stuff. There's no getting away from the fact that we have hit the target on the least amount of occasions than any other team in the league and we can't deny it. We need to be a bit more clinical and a bit more ruthless.
"I am confident it will turn. We're creating good chances and I think we are getting in some good areas. We just need to keep doing the right things and eventually things will fall for us.
"We've not carried a great deal of luck in the opening five games, but we can't feel sorry for ourselves. We have to go into the Hibs game full of optimism and be positive about it and give ourselves the best chance of going there and causing an upset."
Alan Power and Ethan Erhahon will return after suspension to strengthen the squad, but Saints will still be without injured pair Charles Dunne and Greg Kiltie.
We're hoping we'll get Charles back in training in the next couple of weeks. He had a slight hamstring tear in the week leading up to the international break.
"Greg had a little bit of keyhole surgery on his knee just to tidy that up. The two boys are making good progress and hopefully we'll have them back available in the not too distant future.
"Everybody else is good and we've got a couple of players back from suspension so the squad is a lot stronger going into this game than it was last week."
Alan Power returns to the squad after suspension (Image: Jeff Holmes)
