Kris Boyd, the Kilmarnock striker, believes his club will be able to reflect on a season of great progress this summer if Ladbrokes Premiership status is comfortably confirmed.

The former Rangers and Scotland player, not quite ready to throw in the towel on hopes of supplanting Partick Thistle in the coveted sixth place position, spoke eloquently of the optimism now pervading the Ayrshire club after the upheaval and turmoil of recent times.

Boyd’s penalty kick opener in Inverness was swiftly wiped out by Billy Mckay, leaving those chances of top six football hanging by a thread. The 33-year-old, though, was soon looking at the broader picture.

Having finished the game with seven teenagers on the field, Killie certainly hold the air of a club looking upwards rather than at the perils lying below them in the league table.

Given the squad and managerial changes of the past year, Boyd feels simply avoiding last season’s grim struggle near the foot of the table will be a measure of success in itself.

“At the start of the season, what amounted to improvement was to get away from where we were last season,” Boyd said. “With the turnover of players and everything else that happened in the summer, I think it amounts to a good point when you come to places like this with so many teenagers in the line-up.

“The club is in a good place going forward. You have to take courage and belief from coming to places like Inverness and getting a point. I think in the past it might have been a scrappy game we lost.

“The problem in the past was we could put in performances and get positive results, but also get beat by three, four or five goals. The main thing was to stop that and be more compact and difficult for teams to break us down. We've done that, especially on the road this season.

“At home we've still suffered a couple of heavy defeats but these things happen when you're a team in transition. From where we were in 11th spot, to be in the position we're in with eight games left, has to be good.

“But we know with a couple of defeats we can get dragged back into it, while a couple of wins could nick sixth place off Partick, although that will be difficult now.”

For such seasoned campaigner, the injection of youth within the dressing room certainly fuels optimism.

"You only have to look at where the club has been in the last five or six years. Everybody had us tipped to go down,” he said. “But there has been great work done behind the scenes by the likes of (youth academy director) Paul McDonald and (past youth coach) Alan Robertson. It's not as if it has just happened by chance.

“The conveyor belt of young kids is great but I think as a club the next step is to bring them into the squad and give them an opportunity to play football. But you also need to look at it and say, can we sell Greg Kiltie for a million pounds or Greg Taylor for five or six hundred grand or whatever?

“The main aim is to take the club forward again and you want to be seen as a club that gives young boys an opportunity.”

The draw was certainly more valuable to Killie than to Inverness. St Johnstone’s self-destructive streak, with Danny Swanson and Richard Foster sent off for brawling, added to their woes with a last-gasp victory to Hamilton.