TT No.229: Andy Gallon - Wed 13th May 2009; Kilmarnock v St Mirren; Scottish Premier League; Res: 2-1; Att: 5,927 (1,130 away); Admission: £20; Programme: £2.50 (52pp); FGIF Match Rating: ****
Matchday images (7) >view>
Rugby Park's character and appearance have been transformed since my last visit 20 years ago. In March 1989, moribund Kilmarnock were out of the top flight and playing before small crowds at a rambling, gloomy, cavernous ground apparently stuck in a 1960s time warp. Then, a new regime, laden with cash, ambition and ideas, took control, and having been unable to get permission to start again elsewhere, opted to revamp what they had. During the summer of 1994, after the bulldozers had done what it says on the tin, three new stands were built and the 1961 vintage Main (West) Stand given a much-needed makeover. A swish hotel, opened in 2002, completes the facilities, which are now Premier League in every sense and commensurate with Killie's status as a 'giant of the provinces'.
Given the constrained nature of the site, the club have done very well to squeeze in 18,128 seats, though the inadequate leg room in the new stands apparently necessitates an uncomfortable 90 minutes for anyone over 5ft 9in. Being 6ft 2in, I chickened out and went in the West Stand, where tread depths are more generous and knees less bruised. Unusually for a football ground, Rugby Park, 10 minutes' walk from Kilmarnock's grim centre and home to the club since 1899, is in one of the nicest parts of a fairly nondescript town. It remains landlocked amid sandstone villas of an attractive gabled design found across Scotland. The old ground's roof-mounted tripod-style floodlight pylons were always a distinctive feature towering over this sleepy residential district, and the updated versions, still poking incongruously above homes and gardens, are very similar.
The best point of entry is Dundonald Place, off the main road into Kilmarnock from the coast. An ornate archway (which might be made into much more of a feature than it is) leads into the car park, with the 50-bedroom hotel to the left and the stadium (it surely merits that description these days) on the right. The former, whose grandiose official title is the Ayrshire Conference and Banqueting Centre, is on land formerly occupied by Killie's training ground. Light brickwork, flagpoles and banks of glazing compensate for its box-like appearance. It's a nice little earner for the club. Unlike in 1989, the car park is now surfaced, though new houses have since encroached into the pocket of land between Rugby Park's perimeter and the railway line to Ayr. The club shop, on such a sunny day akin to a sauna inside, is housed in a portable building in the car park. "Are you staying in the hotel?" the forehead glistening woman running it asked. Ha! If only my budget extended that far. The back of the new Moffat Stand and the old West Stand dominate this part of the site. Rising starkly behind a wall bearing supporters' names on its red bricks and the club's besquirelled motif in black and burnished gold, the Moffat Stand is identical to its sister, the Chadwick Stand, at the north end. It's a cheap and cheerful cantilever, and looks the same as those at McDiarmid Park in Perth. The exposed steelwork holding up the roof is painted navy blue, with its concourse and stairways open to the elements. I wouldn't count on its shallow roof protecting anyone sitting in the front rows from the worst of the weather. An electronic scoreboard, a museum piece, really, is suspended from the fascia, directly above the goal. It came from South Dakota, and was once considered hi-tech. A claustrophobic shelter for the disabled is positioned at touchline level on the near side.
Despite the camouflage, style signs of the utilitarian 1960s are everywhere within and without the West Stand. Killie have done their best to smarten it up, by adding a gable and steps in front of the main entrance, and by recladding it in the same light blue panels used in the three new stands, but pockmarks are still visible beneath the foundation. Peek into reception, and you'll see dark wood cabinets housing trophies and mementoes from past glories - and Killie, notably in the Sixties when the ground was first modernised, have had a few. There's also a minimalist bar, 'The Player', which saw its first pint (of 'heavy', I imagine) pulled in 2004. Upstairs, in the cramped room where refreshments ('Say Aye to a Killie Pie') are sold, there is a montage of photographs from yesteryear, including one of elliptical Rugby Park as it was before the changes. Four columns prop up the stand's roof, which has a peak at the front inclined towards the now-heated pitch. There are three tiers of seats, a mixture of royal and navy blue, and these are broken up into bays reflecting a form of socio-economic apartheid in the time honoured manner. Note the wooden floorboards. The use of translucent sheeting in the roof makes this stand much brighter and airier than it used to be. The players' tunnel is off-centre, meaning the modern perspex dugouts are conjoined, as if Siamese twins. A narrow way beneath the far end of the West Stand takes you to the Chadwick Stand, which, like the Moffat Stand, has two tiers of navy blue plastic tip-up seats, an electronic scoreboard (also from South Dakota) and a pillboxesque low-level shelter for the disabled. This end is designated for away fans.
The East Stand is the most interesting part of the new arrangements. It is irregularly shaped, rather like the razed Milton Road Stand at The Dell, Southampton. This is because the layout of the ground is dictated by the back gardens of the villas on Dundonald Road, which kinks into a 'V' as it wends towards the town centre. The stand starts out with two tiers of royal blue plastic tip-up seats, but as the angle tightens, the upper tier is lost before the structure ends abruptly and completely, level with the edge of the penalty area. Six flagpoles fill in this awkward north-east corner, with the flags for this game at half-mast in memory of a long-serving former Killie groundsman, who died recently. Both teams wore black armbands, too. Beyond the flagpoles, St Marnock's Church, one of several lovely examples in the town, can be glimpsed. An ugly brick building, with horribly clashing roof lines, is positioned between the East and Moffat Stands. It's a first aid centre - appropriate, really, because you feel distinctly queasy just looking at it. The oblong blocks of floodlights are mounted on bulky, stumpy pylons, with four fringing each of the East and West Stand roofs. Killie have bent over backwards to ensure the 1960s and the 1990s blend seamlessly. The trick hasn't quite come off, however, and the long-term plan must be to build a new stand on the west side.
With the Scottish Premier League in its 'post-split' phase, this fixture formed a crucial part of what is effectively a bottom-six play-off. Victory all but secured Killie's top-flight status, while St Mirren dropped to the foot of the table with two games to play, thanks to this defeat and Falkirk's 1-0 success at Hamilton Academical. If they lose at Falkirk on Saturday, and Inverness Caledonian Thistle get a point at Rugby Park, the Buddies will be down. It was typical Scottish football - high-speed, high-risk and high-contact. The huge number of errors as the play swung from end to end might have left the purist wincing, but for the neutral, it meant rip-roaring entertainment. For the committed, the breakneck nature of the proceedings must have been a delicious torture.
I felt a bit sorry for St Mirren. The Buddies made the brighter start, and went close through Andy Dorman's flashing 20-yarder, but fell behind in the 23rd minute to a goal scored from the home team's first serious attack. A poor clearance was fed out to Mehdi Taouil on the left flank and his pinpoint cross was met by the unmarked Kevin Kyle, who bulleted a header past Mark Howard and into the top corner. Kyle, a bustling centre forward from the old school, was a crowd-pleasing chaser of lost causes, and his conspicuous display of energy was rewarded with a second, four minutes after the restart. Garry Hay took a nod-down from Kyle on the halfway line and hooked the ball down the left channel for Willie Gibson to outmuscle John Potter and square for Kyle, steaming in as noisily as a freight train tackling a steep gradient, to sidefoot his seventh Killie goal from 12 yards.
St Mirren, zipping the ball about with calm authority, refused to wilt, and Killie keeper Alan Combe (booed, for some reason, when the teams were announced) had to dive full length to push aside a fierce Dorman drive. Kyle, surely one of the best January transfer window signings of all time, almost deceived Howard with a speculative effort from well outside the box, and Buddies defender Will Haining blocked a Taouil shot when a goal looked certain. The visitors put the peregrine among the pigeons by pulling one back with a minute of normal time remaining. A 12-yard Dorman shot after a mis-kick dropped to substitute Craig Dargo, and he steered the ball though a forest of legs. Three minutes of added time cranked up the tension, and the Buddies won a corner with virtually the last action of the match. Over it came, and a visiting head sent it into the back of the net, only for referee Crawford Allan to disallow it for climbing on Hay by keeper Howard, who had joined this last-ditch attack. Refreshingly, when interviewed later on BBC Radio Scotland, St Mirren manager Gus MacPherson admitted the decision had been the right one, and that the whistler had a good game. I almost veered off the A71 (not difficult; it's a dreadful road) in amazement.
Killie like to describe themselves (admittedly, there's not much competition), as 'The Pride of Ayrshire'. The 'new' Rugby Park is, indeed, a home fit for the county's heroes. Aesthetically, its clean, ordered lines are so much more appealing than the jumbled dilapidation which preceded it. With the loss of the original open oval, the stadium is now a vibrant arena capable, even when two-thirds empty, of generating a decent atmosphere. I'm sure Killie fans wouldn't want to go back to how things were.
contributed on 14/05/09