Unless Kilmarnock can get their stuttering season going and somehow salvage their top-six ambitions, this weekend’s trip down the M77 offers a tantalising prospect for visitors Rangers – an end at last to their plastic pain.
After 11 years, Killie chiefs are finally set to rip up their astroturf pitch at the end of the season and reinstall a grass surface at Rugby Park. The move comes a full 12 months ahead of an outfight Premiership ban on artificial surfaces in the top flight. But for the Ibrox club, it can’t come soon enough.
While Celtic have enjoyed some memorable, free-scoring afternoons on the 4G, Rangers have never quite found the fake turf so easy to tread. In fact, since the plastic pitch was installed at Rugby Park in the summer of 2014, Gers have managed just six wins from their 14 visits. The other results have been a succession of frustrating encounters in which the Light Blues have been left banging their heads against the wall as well-drilled Killie outfits have obstinately refused to budge from their stubborn shapes.
From Lee Clark to Steve Clarke and now Derek McInnes, a string of Kilmarnock managers have come up with game plans that have made the most of their artificial surface’s strange spins and befuddling bounces to bewilder the Ibrox players. Yet those cautious tactics have never quite had the same impact on Gers’ Old Firm rivals.
Last season, Brendan Rodgers’ men might have crashed out of the League Cup at Rugby Park as they found their feet once more under the returning Northern Irishman before suffering another slip-up in December, but they would get their brutal revenge by hitting McInnes’ men for five in the penultimate Premiership game of the campaign.
The year before, under Ange Postecoglou, the Hoops rattled in nine goals on their two trips to Killie. Rangers, meanwhile, have only once managed a to record a winning margin of more than a single goal away to Kilmarnock in the past decade.
The Ayrshire set-backs they’ve endured at Killie’s hands have been costly too. A Friday night trip back in August 2016 was supposed to be a confidence builder ahead of the first top-flight derby clash against Celtic and Gers since the Light Blues had completed their journey back from the lower leagues.
Instead, former Ibrox hero Kris Boyd netted in a 1-1 draw that would shine a light on the huge failings Rodgers’ Invincibles would go onto expose so brutally eight days later in a 5-1 Parkhead pasting. Boyd would be back at it again just before Christmas of the following year, netting in a 2-1 win that would come back to haunt the Ibrox side as they missed out on second place to Aberdeen by just three points.
Steven Gerrard struggled to get to grips with the astro too. He may have seen Gers win on his first experience of the Killie surface, but Jamie Murphy paid a heavy price for that League Cup triumph after suffering a season-ending knee injury.
Liverpool legend Gerrard raged after the game: “There’s no getting away from it that a surface like Kilmarnock’s does not help injuries. Elite footballers who are being paid good money – not just at Rangers, at every elite club – shouldn’t have to play on plastic surfaces, simple as that.”
His view on the situation wouldn’t improve much as he saw his team triumph in just three of the seven further matches he oversaw at Rugby Park before quitting in November 2021. And his former No2 Michael Beale didn’t have much better luck there either.
His sole visit as boss came on the opening day of last season and ended in a 1-0 defeat that would spark the beginning of the end of his tenure in Govan. Current boss Philippe Clement has perhaps bitter-sweet memories of his only Killie trip to date.
Goals from James Tavernier and Tom Lawrence saw the then table-topping Light Blues come from a goal down to cement their place at the Premiership pole. But they couldn’t cling to that lofty perch, with the first cracks in their title hopes appearing just days later as they were shocked at home by Motherwell.
Clement has certainly made his feelings known on the matter and, like Gerrard, insists there’s no place for plastic in the Premiership. “You look at the big leagues, the top leagues, there’s not one artificial pitch,” said the Belgian gaffer last season when quizzed on Livingston’s ropey 4G. “There’s a reason for that.
“For the quality of football, for the quality also for spectators to watch good football games, it needs to be on grass pitches. It is what it is and we will adapt. It’s not an excuse for any result.”
We’ll have to wait for Sunday to see if the Ibrox boss feels the same way about the Ayrshire astro.
Rangers record on the Rugby Park astro
Played 14
Won 6
Lost 5
Drawn 3