True to form this season, my laziness has meant that there has been a whopping eight matches since my last post here. True to Killie's season, it's been a mixed bag of results too. The record reads P8 W3 L4 D1 and in those games we've managed to beat - and get beat by – both Dundee and Inverness Caley. Go figure.

The latest run started pretty miserably. Despite my bold assurance that we'd never lost at the Almondvale Shopping Centre, Livi went and done us 3-1. With the kind of irony kept only for football it seems, they hadn't won a match since...oh, since they last played us. We even drew first blood with a Johnstone effort but after that we fell to bits. A few days later we blew the chance to make amends by surrendering meekly (again) 1-0 at home to Aberdeen; albeit to a fantastic strike by Kevin "too-scared to play against France" McNaughton.

The omens were mixed going into the next home match against Dundee Utd. Sure, last time they headed down our way Kris Boyd put five goals past them (even if Utd's manager Ian McCall failed to notice). But, last time out at Tannadice they were in dire need of a result and we duly obliged by handing them 3 goals silver service style. With Utd still languishing at the foot of the table, once again McCall was under pressure and a fired-up team of Arabs was expected. As it turned out, Utd were shit, missed a penalty, we coasted to a 3-0 victory (2 from Boyd (1 pen) and a scorcher from Danny Invincibile), and shortly afterwards wee Ian got the bullet.

Was that us back on track? Er, no. A dreadful 1-0 defeat away to Dundee followed, the Dark Blues scoring from a somewhat dubious penalty in their only venture into our half. We huffed and puffed a lot – even hit the bar at one point – but a goal never looked really likely. To make matters worse, in their wisdom (some cock and bull idea that the ground might be packed) Dundee decided to house the away fans in what is officially known as The Worst Away Section in a Football Stand in Scotland, i.e. at the end of that stupid bent main stand of theirs behind the customary pillars. I wouldn’t mind Dundee getting relegated if only to stop us having to go to Dens Park.

That game was poor, but the following week’s home defeat to the Highland Flingers was harder to take. Once again we dominated things without a real cutting edge. Once again we got beat 1-0 with a goal scored in Caley’s only real attempt to decamp from their own half. They did this to us earlier in the season at Rugby Park, whilst still under wee Robbo’s control, getting an undeserved equaliser that day. To deepen the gloom this result killed off our fading hopes of making the mildly more lucrative Top Six. According to the manager, though, any higher a finish than tenth (our lofty position last season) would mean progress. Technically, he’s right, of course, but realistically he’s talking bollocks.

The last game before the split, then, saw us heading to Fir Park – the silliest ground in Scotland. Not having ANY stands that match, or even vaguely complementary to each other, is an architectural achievement of some note. Add that to the fact that the pitch has a slope you could ski down in winter and you have a ground that, quite frankly, I don’t much like. Anyway, it’s football we’re here for. Games with Motherwell are a bit like fencing contests where the players seem to believe that points are awarded for hitting and/or injuring your opponent. I blame Billy Davies for this. Amid the wailing and gnashing, Killie took the lead through a smashing Peter Leven free kick and led almost till the death, when Well’s Stephen Craigan took a throw-in having run from somewhere in the car-park to launch it. It fooled Alan Combe anyway as he slapped it into his own net. 1-1 and Motherwell secured their places in the filthy half dozen.

So Killie headed into the post-split fixtures with mouth-watering ties against Dundee (H), Caley (A), Utd (A), Livi (H) and Pars (H) to look forward to. In the first of these only 3770-odd hardy souls thought the match worth their time on a Saturday afternoon. Killie did play pretty well, but Dundee were appalling. It took us till the 84^th minute, however, and a Dargo poke, to settle things. And so to last Saturday and the long trip to the Highland Capital.

As it turned out it wasn’t so long for me as I ended up missing just my second match of the season. It’s not a long story, but not an interesting one either. Bottom line is I wasn’t there. Unforgivable I know but I’m learning to live with it. Unlike Easter Road on the first day of the season, the match wasn’t on the radio (and I couldn’t be arsed with the internet broadcast knowing just how bad it would have been) so – another first for me – I “watched” the match by a combination of radio updates and the Sky Sports News vidiprinter. Disturbingly I was transfixed by the latter. How can something so mundane be so compelling? At one point I temporarily forgot about the Killie match, so engrossed was I in the updates from St. Mary’s where Southampton and Norwich were banging them in every few minutes. Radio Scotland were first to tell me that “there’s been a goal at Inverness…”. Don’t you just love that? You can almost feel their glee at keeping you in suspense for just that few seconds more. Then they tell you who’s scored: “….and it’s come for the away side. A good run down the flank by Fowler, who’s cross was bundled into the net by Gary McDonald. 1-0 to Kilmarnock.”. Just then the Sky vidiprinter caught up: GOAL: SPL Inverness CT 0-1 Kilmarnock Gary McDonald 21. Beautiful in it’s simplicity. Of course, by the time I finished celebrating Inverness had equalised via a penalty. GOAL: SPL Inverness CT 1-1 Kilmarnock 1 Ross Tokely (pen) 28. With Inverness CT highlighted in yellow this time. It’s astonishing how deflating a change of font colour can be to a man. Half-time came and went and things got a bit quiet (even Southampton and Norwich had taken a breather) then: GOAL: SPL Inverness CT (It’s not yellow!! It’s not yellow!!!!) 1-2 Kilmarnock Leven (pen) 71 flashed up. Well, I jumped around like a moron. For a moment it all seemed too unreal. Why hadn’t Radio Scotland announced it? Then, music to this fan’s ears: “There’s been another goal at Inverness….”. Fuck your dramatic pause, I thought, I’m already celebrating.

Postscript: it finished 4-3 to Southampton, so it looks like ex-Killie hero Gary Holt may be heading back to the English Championship. Hang in there Gary.