SINKING FEELING
Vigurs tries to stay positive as Caley look for a favour from Highland rivals
HOPE can be a funny old thing. Some believe it’s what kills you. Others feel a mere trace of it is better than none at all.
Supporters of Inverness Caley Thistle are probably divided on the matter right now. In some respects, it might have been kinder had this gruesome afternoon in Ayrshire simply finalised their fate.
Instead, they are forced to play a waiting game, desperately clinging to the distant belief that a most unlikely sequence of results can yet preserve their top-flight status for an eighth straight season.
The fact they must hope for Highland rivals Ross County to do them a favour by taking at least a point from Hamilton tomorrow adds an extra layer to the indignity of their suffering right now.
Were Martin Canning’s men to win in Dingwall, Inverness’s games at Dundee on Wednesday and home to Motherwell on Saturday will become irrelevant. The play-offs are now their only possible means of escape. Stranger things have happened but not many.
Left with little choice in the matter, their manager Richie Foran attempted to accentuate the positives of the way his side finished this game but, truthfully, their abject first-half display was hard to flush from the memory.
Five wins from 36 matches is no hard-luck story. The Highlanders have never stopped gifting soft goals to their opponents since hostilities began in August and have long looked doomed to life in the Championship.
Saturday summed up their season: a glaring miss preceding the individual error that led to the opener. A lack of cutting edge coming before the sucker-punch second. A goal out of nothing proving too little too late.
‘We left ourselves with too much to do in the end,’ said midfielder Iain Vigurs (right). ‘They were two bad goals to concede.
‘It was all too late, we didn’t create enough. We made some half chances but, in the end, we didn’t do enough.
‘It is disheartening but it’s been the same the whole season. If you don’t win games, it’s not good enough.’
How different matters might have been had Alex Fisher not fired a fine chance the wrong side of the post inside two minutes.
Ryan Esson, too, will have nightmares about his role in Kilmarnock’s 17th-minute opener, his inability to tame a routine corner allowing Sean Longstaff to prod the ball home from 17 yards despite Brad McKay’s best efforts on the line.
It was the shot in the arm Lee McCulloch’s men required. Fledglings like Kristoffer Ajer, Adam Frizzell and Iain Wilson seemed oblivious to the pressure of the situation thereafter.
The galloping Jordan Jones did the real damage on the counter attack on 57 minutes by racing half the length of the field before finding the bottom corner.
Not for the first time, Caley Thistle produced their best when they were neck-deep in water. Vigurs, Larnell Cole and Liam Polworth each made positive impacts from the bench and when Fisher capitalised on slackness to half the arrears, there were still 19 minutes remaining.
The best Foran’s men could muster, though, was a curling shot by David Raven that forced an outstanding catch from the recalled Jamie MacDonald.
Tomorrow night now looms large. Some Caley players will attempt to deal with the feeling of helplessness by walking the dog or sniffing out morsels of information from events at Dingwall online. Others have a different solution. ‘I might actually go along to the County-Hamilton game,’ former County player Vigurs revealed. ‘I stay in Dingwall, so I might go and watch it. I know Midge (Michael) Gardyne well, so I will ask him for a couple of tickets. ‘I am treated really well when I go back to County. Everyone is really good with me. ‘I am looking for them to do us a favour and I would rather be there watching it than listening to the radio or watching updates on TV. ‘Ross County are safe and you don’t know how they’ll be in the game. They could down tools, but I’ll be telling Midge to go all out.’ Kilmarnock head to Motherwell that same night in the enviable position of knowing with certainty that they have now secured a 25th successive top-flight campaign. This victory was enough for McCulloch to state, for the first time since February, he was hoping for talks to remove the ‘interim’ tag from his title. The Rugby Park board should know this much, though. The man who has admirably guided their club to safety knows all too well how fragile reputations can be in football. He won’t accept a permanent position on any terms. Guarantees of decent resources will need to be forthcoming.
They would be foolish to take his loyalty for granted. On the limited evidence to date, he looks a good fit for their club. He knows the DNA of the Scottish scene. His willingness to promote in-house talents is a welcome change from Lee Clark’s stockpiling of loans from down south.
Surely there is no decision for the powerbrokers to make?
‘That’s not for me to say but he has done really well,’ said defender Luke Hendrie.
‘He has a great appetite for the job and he will be a success at it.
‘Obviously he is fresh from playing, he’s got fresh ideas, and he knows the modern player.’
Whoever is offered the post has much to work with. Not only did the likes of Jones and Wilson catch the eye on Saturday, the home bench was littered with emerging talents like Innes Cameron and William Graham.
‘The core of the young players is really exciting,’ said on-loan Burnley full-back Hendrie.
‘You saw the number of boys that arrived here in the summer — well these young academy boys have pushed them out of the way.’