GARY Woods has backed Hamilton to bounce back from their opening Ladbrokes Premiership defeat to Aberdeen - by continuing their winning run against the Pittodrie club at the Superseal Stadium tomorrow night.

English keeper Wood pulled off some outstanding saves against Derek McInnes’s side on Sunday afternoon, but he was unable to prevent Martin Canning’s team from slumping to a 2-0 loss in their first league match.

Yet, the 26-year-old played in both of the 1-0 victories that Accies recorded against their north-east rivals at home in the 2016/17 campaign and believes they can pull off another upset in their Betfred Cup last 16 match.

“We beat them twice at home last year,” he said. “We will be confident going into that game that we can get something. I don’t know if they don’t like the surface, it could be a number of factors. We’ve got good home form against them and we will be looking to take that into Wednesday.

“I certainly hope we can start turning more people over there. It is not ideal being Astroturf and some people disagree with it, but we have it and have had it for many years so we will just need to get on with it.”

Hamilton’s hopes of getting a result at Pittodrie were effectively ended in the second half when Xavier Tomas, the French centre half who was making his league debut, was ordered off for a second bookable offence.

But Woods, like his manager Canning, felt the match referee had allowed himself to be influenced by the 15,165-strong crowd at Pittodrie and stressed his side would continue to take a physical approach.

He said: “There were a few tackles going in. A few of the boys put their foot in and we paid the price. Ultimately, it got one of our boys sent off, which put us on the back foot.

“Can you be too physical? It is part of the game. It is a man’s game and a battle and we gave our all. Unfortunately, we were on the losing side.

“But a couple of them were dubious fouls. They didn’t seem to get many bookings themselves because there was some persistent fouling on their side. Referees have a hard job to do and we gave them an opportunity to book our players and it happened.

“You wouldn’t like to think the crowd influenced the referee. You wouldn’t think the officials would get turned by the crowd at the big stadiums. But it can help the home team when they are up roaring but it is part and parcel away from home. They get a lot more through the gates than us.

“We knew going into the game that Aberdeen would be a good side. They have lost two key players from last season but they have replaced them well with Gary Mackay-Steven, Ryan Christie and Greg Stewart.

“At times we weren’t brave enough on the ball and we gave it back to them, but we are confident going into Wednesday, coming back to our place, that we will be able to get something.”