It’s one of the game’s cliches that successful teams can win ugly when it counts.

Kilmarnock could never be accused of scarring the face of the beautiful game; they are one of the league’s better-passing sides, some of their constructions and inter-play were quite exquisite and they deserved the win, but although they created a series of chances which were rebuffed, they finally clinched the points through a scruffy own goal.

Not that striker David Fernandez, in only his second start for his side, was having that. “I’m claiming it,” he said with a broad smile, before finally admitting that he couldn’t see if his shot had actually crossed the line before it was clattered in by defender Kirk Broadfoot.

Had the ball not ended up in the net it may have anyway; the referee could have given a penalty for a foul on Gary Wales. As it was the goal was enough to send Killie back into the top six and inject a fair dose of adrenaline into Fernandez, who performed even more fulsomely after it.

Killie were utterly dominant and could have closed the game out by half time – indeed it could have been irretrievable within the first three minutes – but for the resolution of Saints’ goalkeeper Tony Bullock who, for the second week running, kept his team in the game.

In the first minute he tipped over a dipping shot from Gordon Greer, once of Love Street, and two minutes later jabbed out a foot to stop a Fernandez left foot shot by-passing him.

And just before the half-hour mark he made another one, rather more glamorous, making a diving block to a Danny Invincibile shot.

But if the goalkeeper was blameless, then 19-year-old Steven Naismith palpably was not when he sent wide a simple header from eight yards. It was a miserable end to a delicious move, Fernandez playing in the overlapping and unmarked Invincibile on the right.

St Mirren usually play with three at the back but such was the perceived danger from the young Naismith, who leaves teenagerdom on Thursday, that they had pulled back Andy Millen into central defence, leaving David Van Zanten to deal with the menace on the right flank.

From the initial battering – and that does a disservice to Kilmarnock’s sustained and relentless passing moves – St Mirren came more into it. Simon Lappin was tricky and productive on the left and his side’s twin strikers, particularly John Sutton, were causing aerial panic as they out-jumped their markers.

Nonetheless, despite their bustle they were unable to pressurise the Killie goalkeeper Graeme Smith, who had been doubtful with an elbow injury, or to add an ache to his joint, and the half passed without him making a meaningful save.

The turnabout came after the turnaround when the Killie goalkeeper was finally required to earn his corn.

First Lappin buzzed clear on the left and whizzed in a cross for Stewart Kean to head into Smith’s gut and then the lithe young man stretched low to his left to parry after Sutton held off his marker and whirled to send in a precise right foot shot.

However, just when it appeared that Saints might unjustly break the deadlock Killie scored one of the more unlikely goals. They had already appealed that a Frazer Wright header, cleared from the line, had actually gone in – the linesman admitted to being unsighted – but little more than five minutes later, in the 69th minute, the ball certainly did cross, although it was down to a catastrophic error. Greer slid in a low pass, Gary Wales seemed to be pulled down by Kevin McGowne, the ball flitted out to Fernandez wide on the left edge of the box. His shot was bypassing the sticks but Broadfoot, running in an attempt to clear, could only hammer into his own net.

By now the game had become a little scrappy and moderately ill-tempered. The managers, however, were more concerned about their own players’ perceived inadequacies and inattentiveness and the old tin roof of the main stand steamed and twisted under their vitriol.

To be fair, Jim Jefferies did also manage to crack a smile, a season first surely, as his team spluttered out time. Gus MacPherson, having thrown on his substitutes unavailingly and watched one of them, Billy Mehmet, head what could have been the equaliser tamely at Smith, was gallant enough to admit that the better side deserved their win, if in a cruel and galling way.