Partick Thistle ace Adam Barton became the latest player to put the boot into the artificial pitch at Hamilton and insisted he wouldn’t pay to watch a match played on the plastic.
While the likes of Brendan Rodgers and Scott Brown have all had high profile pops at the Accies surface, Barton added his voice to the chorus of disapproval in the wake of Thistle’s 0-0 stalemate at the Super Seal Stadium on Tuesday night.
A niggly, scrappy affair between two sides desperate for points at the wrong end of the Ladbrokes Premiership was certainly not a classic spectacle and Barton, 26, wasted no time in expressing his disdain for the much-maligned pitch.
He said: “I’m surprised these pitches are allowed in top flight football. It’s even little things like sliding on it as I ended up grazing my knees. I don’t understand it.
“I wouldn’t pay to go and watch a match on a pitch like that. I don’t think it’s football.
“It’s about who can have the best luck from a long ball, that’s all it is.
“It’s a difficult place to come to because of the pitch. It would be nice to see something change about these pitches.
“No matter how much ability or talent you’ve got you have to forget about that when you go to Hamilton because you won’t get a game of football.
“We had to change our game completely to basically hook the ball forward – and that’s what it is when you go there.
“You never see teams passing out from the back and even if there are a couple of passes, then the ball goes up.
“You can’t play four or five passed out from your own area. It doesn’t work like that.
“I’ll be interested to see Celtic play there. They’re still very good at what they do but even they will need to change in some ways.
“You have to concentrate on your first touch and you have less time to pick a pass. Everything is against you.
“For the teams that like to play and especially for myself who likes to drop off and get on the ball, you can’t do it and I didn’t try it once.
“If I lost the ball as a result of a silly bobble they could go through and score.
“Our midfield is there to try to get on the ball and keep us playing forward but we just had to try to win second balls and headers. I actually felt we did it quite well considering that’s not our game so it shows we can adapt at times.”
Thistle were looking to build on their morale-boosting victory over Dundee at the weekend which ended their long wait for a first league win of the season.
The Jags came close with both Kris Doolan and Miles Storey hitting the woodwork in a match that featured a series of contentious decisions by under-fire referee Steven McLean. Thistle manager Alan Archibald was seething after Ryan Edwards’ shot struck the hands of Dougie Imrie but McLean waved away the penalty claims. Hamilton, too, had their own loud appeals as both managers were left questioning the man in the middle.
Barton added: “It was a good point for us. We do feel we’ve dropped two but a point’s better than none. We should have had a penalty when Ryan’s shot was handled but that’s football when you’re down the bottom."
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