It’s been an eventful few days for those at Hamilton Accies. Last weekend, amid the fever of the brawling St Johnstone players, Martin Canning’s troops faced the task of trying to crush the resolve of nine men as the depleted visitors defended stoutly for the entire second half only to have those defences breached in injury time when Hamilton plundered the points.
On Wednesday night, it was the Accies who found themselves fighting something of a rearguard action for the last 15 minutes or so against Lanarkshire rivals Motherwell as Darien MacKinnon’s silly flick of the finger to a geed-up crowd saw him red carded.
In the cut-throat business of life in the lower echelons of the Ladbrokes Premiership, every point is a prisoner and this was one gladly received as Hamilton showed sturdy defensive nous to repel the Motherwell advances while looking dangerous themselves on the break. Hamilton remain just a solitary point behind their close neighbours in the table.
“That’s two clean sheets in a row from us after conceding a lot of goals prior to that,” said Greg Docherty as he reflected on a fairly miserable March for Hamilton when they suffered a brace of 4-0 defeats and a 6-0 trouncing in the cup. “I think Mikey Devlin was brilliant for us. He is a great leader. Mikey and Georgis Sarris defended the box fantastically well. Although we had to defend well and we showed that we do carry a threat.”
Hamilton’s cause wasn’t helped by MacKinnon’s little fit of pique. By all account, the guilty MacKinnon was left to suffer in silence. “I didn’t actually speak to him after the game, he just got changed quietly,” said Docherty. “I think he knows he has done wrong. He will be a big miss but he is still a good guy to have around the dressing room because he has great experience. But it’s done and we just have to move on. There is no point in dwelling on it. We’ve got a massive game on Saturday and we have to focus on that. We know how important it is for us to beat Ross County and as we’re at home we have to take the initiative. Then we’ve got Dundee the following week so these are two huge games for us. They are games we can win."
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