Stevie Aitken was happy to pick up a point against Celtic B with a host of key players out injured.
East Kilbride looked set to lose their opening game in the Lowland League until Chris Malcolm equalised with the last kick of the game.
Owen Moffat opened the scoring for Celtic and they looked really impressive against a makeshift Kilby side.
EK boss Aitken was without the services of seven key players but he was delighted with his side’s resilience to keep fighting until the final whistle.
“The players deserve credit because they kept going,” said Aitken. “They were excellent to go to the death when it looked like we weren’t going to get anything.
“Looking at the bigger picture, it was a good point because Celtic were really sharp and they have good players.
“They stretched the game and played good football so it was a testing game. We obviously wanted to win but we will take the point and move on.
“I’ve got so many players missing. I had to draft players in on Friday night and Jamie Stevenson pulled up during the warm-up.
“We are down to the bare bones because we had seven or eight players missing today. We had four under-20’s players involved.
“Joao Victoria will be back because he was at a wedding. Chris Miller, Gregg Wylde and Steven Saunders are all touch and go to be back for our next game.
“All these players are good enough to play League One or Two in Scotland and Lee Miller is another one.
“Thankfully, none of the injuries are long-term but the boys have played a lot of football recently after not playing since December.
“They’ve worked hard in pre-season and hopefully we will have players returning soon.”
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