Clarke airs frustrations over penalty

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Not for the first time this season, Steve Clarke voiced his frustration with officialdom as Kilmarnock and St Johnstone battled to a goalless draw that was indicative of how close these teams are in style and in the Premiership.

The pair approached kick-off with just a single point separating them and at full-time it was a case of as you were following a hard-fought stalemate that allowed Killie to keep their necks just in front in fourth in the table.

Matt Kennedy came within a whisker of stealing it for Saints, and ensuring a sixth successive victory, with a magnificent curling and dipping effort that crashed back off the upright as the clock ticked down.

However, with Zander Clark recording a sixth consecutive clean sheet with a superb save from Greg Stewart, Killie boss Clarke was adamant referee Willie Collum had been wrong to deny Kris Boyd a 75th-minute penalty after tangling with Perth skipper Joe Shaughnessy.

“I’ll probably let the guys from television go through it and tell us it was a penalty but we didn’t get it,” he said. “It looked as if he was wrestled to the ground, so on another day we might have got it.

“Listen, referees make the decisions and you’ve just got to get on with it. But it was a decent shout for a penalty.”

Both rear-guards failed to give an inch and they had to be alert from the first whistle to the last as the inventive players on both teams – Kennedy and Drey Wright for Saints and Chris Burke and Stewart for Killie – tried their hardest to earn their team the breakthrough.

“I think we probably shaded it on the balance of play,” added Clarke after seeing his side extend their recent record to just one defeat in their last nine outings.