Rangers brought the curtain down on the Scottish Premier League season so quietly that you would hardly have known the show was over. There were no demands from a rapturous audience for a couple of encores.
They had, after all, won the Championship tumultuously three weeks ago at Celtic Park and their minds were focused on the little matter of the Scottish Cup final.
The game was of greater significance, however, to Kilmarnock, who had a possible UEFA Cup place on offer. But they could only muster a 1-1 draw and their European hopes now rest on the Fair Play Awards - apparently they are relying on Manchester United behaving badly in Wednesday's European Cup final against Bayern Munich.
The match produced the nearest to a decorous atmosphere that Ibrox is ever likely to achieve, with the crowd saving its voice for the altogether more important business of next Saturday's final.
Gabriel Amato's goal for Rangers in the fifth minute had an air of unreality about it; his soft header on the end of a floating cross from Jonathon Johansson flying out of Gordon Marshall's reach and dropping almost apologetically into the net.
With nothing to prove Rangers were happy to sit on their lead, but Kevin McGawne - booked for a foul on Johansson in the 48th minute - had other ideas. Three minutes later the centre-half put his head to an Ian Durrant free kick and glanced the ball wide of goal keeper Stefan Klos.
Kilmarnock manager Bobby Williamson rang a complete set of second-half substitutions in a bid to break the deadlock, and only a fine Marshall save from an Andrei Kanchelskis cross stopped them from winning.
Paul Kane's 71st-minute header against Dundee saw St Johnstone leapfrog into third place and ensured that Kilmarnock's future was left in the lap of the gods.
St Johnstone's 1-0 victory secured them a European berth for the first time in 28 years, after manager Sandy Clark accidentally fed his team false information about the score 60 miles away at Ibrox.
Believing Rangers were hanging on to a 1-0 lead and that their future was therefore in their own hands, Saints came out with greater urgency in the second half and were rewarded with Kane's crucial header.
