Prime-time point apiece
SCOTTISH football may be negative, as a prominent Premiership manager has been at pains to point out this week, but rarely is it boring. Everything that is at once glorious and quite frankly, primitive, about our national sport was on display at Rugby Park yesterday.
Anything that wasn’t nailed down seems to have been shipped out and replaced at Kilmarnock over the summer, but one thing remains constant, and that is Kris Boyd’s name on the scoresheet. He got the opener here early on after the retreating Liam Lindsay was unfortunate to ricochet the ball into his path, and it was poignant to see Boyd point to the sky as he dedicated his goal to the younger brother he lost so tragically recently, and whose funeral he attended two days before the game.
“We’re delighted for Kris, he’s had a tough week or 10 days” said his manager Lee Clark.
The only thing more fitting would have been a Kilmarnock victory, but Thistle fully deserved their point after clawing their way back into the game not once, but twice.
David Amoo was the creator of their first equaliser just after the half hour when he burst past Luke Hendrie on the right and crossed to the near post, where Stevie Lawless nipped across Scott Boyd to take it away from him with his first touch. In the same movement, his second touch caught the ball on the volley, drifting delightfully across Jamie MacDonald and in.
The visitors were screaming for a penalty as we moved into the second half when Chris Erskine slalomed through four challenges before slipping in Lawless, but Killie sub Nathan Tyson made a vital intervention – which looked illegal – on his debut as he slid in front of the midfielder. Referee Andrew Dallas, who drew the ire of both sets of supporters at various points in the game, waved away the Thistle appeals and awarded a goal kick.
Moments later Souleymane Coulibaly, who had spent an hour locked in a personal duel with the excellent Thistle keeper Ryan Scully, finally got his goal with a clever header from a deep Dean Hawkshaw cross, but Lindsay made up for some slack marking on that occasion to pop up with the equaliser seven minutes from time.
Erskine floated a deep free kick towards the back post where Kris Doolan’s effort was blocked on the line, and there was Lindsay to prod into the roof of the net.
The drama wasn’t finished though, with Thistle captain Abdul Osman sent off two minutes from time after picking up two quick bookings, the first for a tug on Rory MacKenzie and the second three minutes later for hacking through the back of the same player.
Remarkably, the 10 men could have snatched the three points deep into injury time as substitute Ade Azeez outmuscled Jonathan Burn to get to a bouncing through ball, but MacDonald managed to get a hand to his attempted lob to make sure the game ended in a thoroughly entertaining deadlock.