Kilmarnock manager Kenny Shiels admitted it was not a game for the purists but was delighted to see his side snatch a 2-1 win against St Mirren.
In unhelpful conditions, Danny Racchi's sublime last-minute goal earned Killie victory and moved Shiels' side up to seventh in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League table in place of their opponents. Shiels had to watch his side battle back from behind after Lee Mair opened the scoring after 10 minutes. Paul Heffernan levelled before Racchi's winner.
Shiels said: "All I can do is apologise to the fans who came to see entertaining football. If you look at the effort and the desire from both sets of players you can see that it was there to play good football but the game lacked quality."
He added: "The pitch won the game as it stopped our flow. In the first 20 minutes St Mirren taught us a football lesson. But I am really pleased to have won the game as I have been on the other side of the fence this season where we dominated matches that we ended up drawing.
"St Mirren have fantastic depth within our squad and we were missing some big players that fit perfectly into our squad too. We had to resort to playing route-one football and that eventually earned us the winning goal, it was a fantastic finish from Danny."
St Mirren boss Danny Lennon was frustrated by Racchi's last-gasp intervention, especially after witnessing his team's impressive opening to the match.
"There's been a lot of talk about Kilmarnock's playing the Rolls Royce passing game, but we started like a Ferrari today," said Lennon.
"We dominated the game for 30-plus minutes and created the much better chances. I have to give credit to Kenny Shiels and Jimmy Nichol, they made a change when they saw what was happening and they stifled us in the midfield by bringing Manuel Pascali in there.
"Although we haven't taken any points today, I can take away another excellent display in very difficult conditions." Lennon was also disappointed that his side were not awarded a penalty after having what he believed to be four decent claims all turned down by referee Bobby Madden.
"How the officials missed all four of them I don't know," Lennon said.
