FOR a while, this one looked like it would stink to high heaven. Two teams needing a point each to guarantee SPL football next season apparently contriving to fashion a goalless draw. With 20 minutes to go it had all the ingredients of the consumate stitch-up.
But that's to reckon without Kevin Kyle. When a game that had started at a frenetic pace looked in danger of petering out into a tame draw, up popped the big man at the back post, bundling in Garry Hay's looping cross from the left wing to ensure Kil
lie's survival and provide an uncomfortable final-day home game against Falkirk Inverness.
Kyle admitted afterwards that he has been having injections for a hernia and acknowledged that he was uncharacteristically quiet for much of the afternoon, even when the home side stepped up a gear after a quiet first half in which they were outplayed by the visitors. "I had a stinker," he said, "but when wee Garry Hay put up that ball I couldn't miss – I tried to because the Inverness boys really wanted a point, but I was so tired I couldn't even do that right."
The striker joked that he was so exhausted that he "had been strapped into the horse like Charlton Heston", adding that he "hadn't felt this sore since my wee boy spilled boiling water on me". Not that the Killie faithful who roared the striker to the rafters as he and his teammates came out to take the plaudits after the final whistle will care about his aching limbs. "We're all happy, it's a relief for the fans to know that we'll be playing Celtic and Rangers next season," said Kyle.
They love the big centre forward at Rugby Park, but then he has almost single-handedly ensured their continued presence in the top flight. Berti Vogts' former blue-eyed boy has now racked up eight goals in just 12 games since joining from Coventry City (he was on loan at Hartlepool) and is now Killie's top scorer, his match-winner yesterday coming on the heels of the midweek double against St Mirren.
It was little wonder, then, that Caley Thistle targeted the striker. His early exchanges with Ross Tokeley were not for the faint-hearted, referee Willie Collum sensibly stepping aside as the pair tried to batter each other into submission. At times it was like a wrestling bout, both players weighing in with arms, elbows and knees. The only bit of the body that wasn't obviously employed was the brain.
It was a sensible strategy for Inverness. Kilmarnock had little to offer in the first half save for Taouil's trickery in midfield and Kyle's muscularity. Both players were invariably double-teamed when they didn't have the ball and mob tackled when they did. It was an uncompromising approach that generally stood Inverness in good stead except for one ugly moment just before half-time when David Proctor went in studs-first on Hay and should have been red-carded. Only the outbreak of some tasty handbaggery, with Foran swinging like a good 'un, distracted the referee and saved Proctor.
If Jim Jefferies was disturbed at Kilmarnock's lack of ideas ("why would I encourage a long-ball game when we've got Mehdi Taouil in the side?") there's no denying that for much of the match Caley Thistle were the neater and more incisive side, the slick passing of Ian Black, Felipe Morais and Brian Kerr contrasting with the long-ball default of their hosts.
After the game moved out of its frenetic early stages virtually all the best chances fell to the visitors, with Roy McBain, Kerr, Morais and Foran all putting the ball inches wide of Killie keeper Michael Frazer's left post. Yet it was Killie who came nearest to breaking the deadlock on their first and only real attack before the break when Caley's Dougie Imrie almost headed into his own net, only for McBain's goalline clearance to be knocked back in by Hay, whose header thudded off the bar.
Although Killie stepped it up after the break, they were far from an irresistible force. Apart from one Frazer Wright free-kick that barely troubled Michael Fraser in the Caley goal, they did little to suggest that they would go on to win this one before Kyle's dramatic intervention. It could have been worse, too, with Taouil hitting the post in the dying seconds.
Inverness now await their fate with trepidation. Butcher said afterwards that "we're looking forward to it and certainly have nothing to fear – all we have to do is avoid defeat on Saturday and we stay up, it's as simple as that." Or, at least it would be if Caley Thistle's previous two games weren't 1-0 and 4-0 defeats to the team they have to beat, Falkirk.
The full article contains 832 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
