A result neither team would have chosen but in the end it satisfied both. A point each gained, rather than two sacrificed, and a result elsewhere which could be salvation.
Kilmarnock looked the more likely to win, and the odds must have been short on Kevin Kyle scoring with his head, so many chances did he smack on goal, but his equaliser came from leather rather than skin and it was Darren Barr's forehead glance which his shot had to cancel out.
The home side dominated the first half and Falkirk players suffered a tongue-lashing from John Hughes over the break, which certainly improved their play, but it must also have been the news coming in that relegation rivals St Mirren were two down to Motherwell which sent them out in the second with renewed zip and confidence. All the points departing from Paisley now makes it impossible to predict who is going down, with the next two games in seven days determining it.
Kilmarnock chairman Michael Johnston was pictured in the local paper during the week hovering over Jim Jefferies' unguarded back with a sharp implement. It was a pen but it was a bizarre update on the dreaded vote of confidence from the chairman. Johnston had summoned the various supporters clubs to sign a pledge for Jefferies' health and job security, written on a paper on the manager's back as he smiled somewhat weakly at the camera. It was certainly a different take on signing the pledge, although Jefferies can probably take comfort in the fact that the club are so deeply and desperately in debt that successors are probably not queuing up to sign on.
Unlike his opposite number there have been no real calls for his head. There's clearly a sense of sombre realism in Kilmarnock. Jefferies was also solicitous of his former player John Hughes's future prospects at Falkirk - it's probably mandatory in the manager's masonry - stating his admiration for Yogi's redoubtable battling qualities. Well, without being churlish to the big guy, there was little else about his game to swoon over.
But appeals to the locals to turn out in the numbers they managed for the cup-tie replay against Ayr proved only that they would rather see their rivals bested in a fight for local dominance than help bolster their team's struggle against relegation, although Falkirk supporters had turned up in numbers and at full volume.
The first half produced patches of bright football on the sodden and slick turf, which was more than might have been expected on such a nervy occasion. Falkirk had their goalkeeper Danni Mallo to thank for keeping them the match, and perhaps the division, with two brilliant and crucial saves. The first was instinctive from, inevitably, a Kyle header from a Willie Gibson cross, sticking hand and foot to the downward ball - and in the melee which followed Kilmarnock had a good penalty shout when Arnau Riera cawed the feet from Craig Bryson. The second came in injury time when Gibson fed the onrushing Jamie Hamill whose shot from the corner of the penalty box was somehow parried when it seemed it would speed in under the junction.
Kyle was winning everything in the air to the frustration of his marker, Steven Pressley, who resorted to tugs and nudges. However, the aerial battle took an unexpected twist and a surprising score for Falkirk. Neil McCann had taken a corner on the right, which was just kept out by desperate defending, but his second corner was delivered even more cutely and out of the competing bodies in the six-yard box Barr's glancing header put his side ahead.
Kyle did finally manage to score but it was a real shock in that it came off the laces of his left boot, and a fizzer it was. Willie Gibson provided the cross and the big striker leathered home. At the club's annual general meeting Jefferies had said that the reason he did not play the errant Gibson on the right was because he was murder there. The manager had risked homicide then, but if Gibson's contribution from the right was not quite a life-saver for his side it was crucial respiration.
Kyle, captured in January, may be the one to keep them up and he might have scored in the dying minutes when he met a glorious Garry Hay cross with his head only for it, in the words of him manager, "to take the paintwork off the post".
Or as Falkirk coach Brian Rice summed up: "If he played against us every week he'd be in the Brazilian team."
