CRISIS? What crisis? In the mere blink of an eye, Kilmarnock have been transformed from relegation fodder to top-six contenders, courtesy of 180 minutes of football that have delivered back-to-back victories.
The latter half of that total, racked up against St Johnstone at Rugby Park on Saturday, resulted in a 2-1 victory, the first league home success of the campaign for Gary Locke’s side. As pleasing for the Kilmarnock manager was the character shown in overcoming the loss of another early goal, to the visitors’ David Wotherspoon, albeit it was yet another soft concession borne of inadequate defending.
A deserved, well-crafted and expertly converted first-half leveller courtesy of Josh Magennis’s forehead was supplemented by an own goal from Perth defender Brian Easton on the hour mark. His intervention sent Rory McKenzie’s intended cross looping in slow motion over Alan Mannus in the St Johnstone goal, for what was to prove the game’s decisive goal.
It was a well-earned victory too, if the previous week’s win at Dundee United had been a frenzied football smash-and-grab then this was a calm and composed, almost clinical, performance. McKenzie, named man-of-the-match by the sponsors, an award hard to quibble with, certainly felt the winds of change are blowing through Kilmarnock’s season.
The 21-year-old said: “Even though we lost the first goal, I felt we actually started the game well for a change. It wasn’t like previous games when we have conceded a goal and not been playing well. I felt we were always in the game, we kept passing the ball about and deservedly got our equaliser.
“People are asking if we can keep the run going but, two weeks ago, we were being asked if we can actually get a win so we need to keep out feet on the ground.
“We hope that is a corner turned for us. We felt the same way after getting the 2-2 draw with Celtic though and we know what happened after that.
“We’ve got Hearts at home in the League Cup on Wednesday and then Hamilton here next weekend so we need to capitalise and build on these last two wins.”
The greater resilience being displayed on the field has fostered a renewed sense of belief and greater backing from the stands.
McKenzie added: “You can feel the difference among the fans from out on the pitch, even when we went behind there wasn’t the same anger as there was earlier in the season. When we turned it around in the second half you could tell they appreciated the performance.”
In the dog days of Kilmarnock’s early season, the performances of the impressive and ever-busy Jamie MacDonald in the home goal were one of the few bright spots. So his enforced withdrawal early in the second period on Saturday, to be replaced by Conor Brennan, cast somewhat of a shadow over the victory, as his manager acknowledged.
Locke said: “Jamie had a problem with his ankle and knee so we will have to assess the situation over the next few days. He has been in great form this season so it is obviously a concern.”
If concern clouded Locke’s features, then disappointment, both for his team and personally, was etched on Liam Craig’s face after the match. The St Johnstone midfielder is generally composed in front of goal but spurned an excellent opportunity early in the second period with the game delicately poised at 1-1.
The 28-year-old reflected: “Graham Cummins did well to roll the ball back to me in the box. I scored one similar to that last week and, at worst, I should have worked the goalkeeper. That was poor for me personally but we are disappointed as a squad because we have been speaking how important it is to get the first goal in games and building upon that.
“We hadn’t been doing that and so we were making games harder for ourselves. Today we got the first goal but we didn’t really build on it. We had to do more in the game to get anything out of it and we didn’t do that, which is a sore one for us. But we will get back training and we have the League Cup game against Rangers on Tuesday to look forward to.”
Perth manager Tommy Wright shared Craig’s frustration at failing to build on the promising start. He said: “We started reasonably well and were in control. It was a good goal we scored but then we don’t deal with a cross the way we should have, they score and then their tails are up.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here