Kilmarnock 1 - 1 Aberdeen: Scrappy draw typifies end-of-season feeling

If Carlsberg did end-of-season matches… they wouldn’t be anything like this one. Two tired teams did their best to rouse themselves and Aberdeen will feel they probably did enough after the break to have won it but it wasn’t an afternoon to live long in the memory.

Even so, Kilmarnock manager Kenny Shiels, while admitting that his players looked as though they were suffering from fatigue, believes that they haven’t had the credit they have merited.

“We haven’t had one Player of the Month award, which is quite amazing,” he said. “We’ve set so many records this season.

“Rangers were beaten at Rugby Park for the first time in the SPL and we also beat them home and away for the first time. We won the League Cup for the first time, which was our first trophy as a SPL club.

“We beat Celtic in Glasgow for the first time for 55 years and we’ve racked up 15 clean sheets but I think our fantastic achievements have only been partially acknowledged.”

The visitors had been second-best for most of the opening third of the game but they took the first chance which came their way on the half hour.

It was a scrappy goal, with a hint of fortune involved when Scott Vernon’s shot took a benign deflection off Michael Nelson and dropped at the feet of 19-year-old Jamie Masson, who made no mistake from six yards.

James Fowler and Dean Shiels had both shot weakly at Jason Brown either side of the opener when left with only the goalkeeper to beat while Josh Magennis struck Cammy Bell’s left-hand post with a raking drive from 25 yards.

However, Kilmarnock restored parity with a well-worked goal, one which would have warmed the heart of their footballing fundamentalist manager.

William Gros was the architect, using his upper-body strength to hold off challenges before springing Aberdeen’s offside trap with an inch-perfect pass to Shiels, who stroked the ball behind the advancing Brown.

Vernon managed to beat Bell with a venomous angled drive but the offside flag had been raised before Ryan Jack’s pass had reached the striker. Bell saved well from both Jack and Kari Arnason before teenage substitute Declan McManus proved that he can’t stand up for falling down when he contrived to fire a driven cross from Ryan Fraser over the bar from a yard out.