AHEAD of a fresh round of league reconstruction talks tomorrow, those in the top flight who, perhaps reluctantly, sanctioned the return of a relegation play-off place a few years back must now be heaving a massive sigh of relief. Midway through January and it remains the only significant matter still to be resolved in the Ladbrokes Premiership. Trying to drum up interest in Scottish football is hard enough without everything being just about settled with four months still to play. The battle to avoid 11th place and the subsequent nerve-jangling two-legged play-off for survival at least ensures there will be one thing left to talk about.

Celtic will almost certainly win the title, despite Aberdeen and Hearts’ best efforts. Dundee United, now 14 points adrift, will go down barring some kind of Carrie Mathieson-style unlikely rescue effort. There will be some overstated excitement about who can win the race to be knocked out of Europe before the school summer holidays are over, and faux tension over who makes the top six. The relegation play-off scrap, though, remains very much a live and pertinent issue.

Kilmarnock have given themselves a real chance of avoiding it. This 2-1 win over Inverness Caledonian Thistle – a first at home since mid-October – had the effect of hauling them on to the same points total as both Partick Thistle and Hamilton Academical, and only one fewer than Motherwell in eighth. Only an inferior goal difference keeps them in 11th place.

Motherwell may have comprehensively thrashed Rangers over two legs in last year’s play-off final but none of those in danger towards the foot of the Premiership will want to put themselves in a similar position. Whoever ends up as the Championship’s play-off final representative – likely to be one of Rangers, Hibernian or Falkirk – will invariably fancy their chances over two legs against an out-of-sorts Premiership side. It is why, as the Spice Girls once sagely noted, the race is on to get out of the bottom.

“We’re still not in a good situation but we just need to continue what we’ve been doing in the last four games and, hopefully, that’ll be enough to see us climb up the table,” said stalwart Jamie Hamill who had a hand in both of Kilmarnock’s goals scored by Greg Kiltie and Craig Slater. “Obviously, the next game is really important because we’re away to Dundee United, who [despite their results] are a very good side. I thought that they played some good stuff against Celtic. So it’s going to be tough for us and we need to focus on that. If we beat them then we’ll be 17 points clear of them but that’s a big ‘if.’

“This will be a cup final for them, just as it is for us. It’s a last chance for them to claw us back and every game they go into now they know they need to get a positive result. Unfortunately, it’s just not happening for them at the moment but we’re going up there with a wee bit of confidence. We have Hamilton coming up the following weekend and they’re also in the mire – I think everybody is! But we’ve picked up and I hope we can keep that going. After United, everything will take care of itself. We’re just trying to get as many points on the board as possible.”

Thoughts of relegation are not something likely to trouble John Hughes greatly although Saturday’s result means Inverness are not completely out of things just yet. Had they won at Rugby Park and moved 10 points clear of the play-off spot then they could almost certainly have started to focus on looking up the table. With the gap between 11th and seventh now just four points then there remains a chance – no matter how distant – that they could yet be dragged into things.

This was their first defeat in seven matches and there was little doubt, felt Owain Fon Williams, that the wintry conditions played a large part in that. Midway through both halves play was temporarily halted to allow groundstaff to clear snow off the pitch, while the start of the second half was delayed by 10 minutes so the clean-up operation could be completed.

“The guys at Kilmarnock did very well to get the game on,” said the goalkeeper. “I’ve never played in conditions as bad as that before but, in football, there’s no point in dwelling on anything.

“Obviously, it’s good to go over certain things because we want to eliminate mistakes but it was a bit of a crazy day at Rugby Park with the weather. The stoppages to clear the pitch were just part and parcel of the game. If it was going to continue then they had to come on because there were times when we couldn’t see the lines and you had to be aware where you were standing.

“It was difficult underfoot – I’m not going to sit here and say it was just another game because it wasn’t. The snow hangs on to the ball, doesn’t it? But no-one likes it when games are called off and I absolutely hate it. There’s nothing worse so full credit to the staff there. We now have a Scottish Cup replay against Stirling Albion coming up on Tuesday, where we want to do the business and get the job done because that will be another tough game.”