It is an anomaly Aberdeen had not faced non-league opposition for more than five decades.
Each of the other 11 clubs in the Premiership have played cup ties against teams from outside the senior divisions within the last seven years, many more than once. They can keep it.
Except for what was, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively brief period in the latter part of that half-century, there was rarely any need for the Dons to feel relief at being spared the potential pitfall.
And until about a month ago, nor would the current incumbents have been overly concerned about a trip to a venue so far off Scottish football’s beaten track.
Still imbued with early-season confidence, they would have backed their professional pace to comfortably see off part-time opponents.
But as Aberdeen’s dreadful post-World Cup run lengthened and the pressure on Jim Goodwin intensified, his stomach will have begun to churn at the direness of the possibilities.
And as Dave Cormack took his seat directly behind the Recreation Park dugouts, he may well have started to feel a phantom twinge directly between the shoulder blades.
For all that, even the most hard-bitten, fatalistic Aberdeen fan will have struggled to believe their expensively constructed side lost this tie.
Even in surroundings evoking memories of Annan, where a thoroughly strategy-free meander allowed underdogs to hang around dangerously long, what unfolded did not figure in the range of realistic outcomes.
Goodwin, clearly, will not survive this. But the club will, and it will need to work fast to prevent a lost season bleeding into the next for the third straight year.
If next season is to be what this one should have been, the seeds must be planted now. In football, that which happens by accident is rarely good.
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