THE spectre of Paul Hartley's Dundee loomed large over this fixture.
While a match between second and third could not be billed as a title decider, this was very much instead a title eliminator. And it was Falkirk who stuttered and fell by the wayside, beaten 3-1, with only a handful of games to make up what could become an eight-point deficit if Dundee overcome struggling Raith Rovers at home tomorrow.
Hamilton, though, are very much still in the fight. "I wouldn't say it's a two-horse race," said Alex Neil, their player-manager, "but it makes it more difficult [for Falkirk], there's no question about that. We've got to win these big games, that's what it boils down to. It's huge. If we had lost today we would have lost ground."
His side were dominant throughout against a makeshift and inexperienced visiting line-up, with only a brief wobble in the second half when the lanky figure of Mark Beck leapt to nod home a deep cross. He was shown the yellow card for darting into the crowd, celebrating wildly as the travelling support cooed. Their pleasure was to be short-lived, though; two minutes later the home side were back in front.
It was a corner, poorly defended and swung deep into the far-post region. The ball clattered through a couple of bodies but Darian MacKinnon wanted it more than the defence and stabbed home from close range.
But Hamilton should not have left themselves in that situation after squandering a pack of first-half chances. Jason Scotland was most culpable, although he also managed to open the scoring in the first five minutes, bundling home after Martin Canning had risen to meet a corner.
After that, though, he was wasteful, first smacking a terrible effort over the bar after neat work from Louis Longridge on the byeline. Worse was to come. A brilliant Ali Crawford through ball hoodwinked Will Vaulks, and while James Keatings' cross could have been cleaner, Scotland could only manage the sort of clunky touch that would shame a pregnant rhinoceros. The ball bounced off him and painfully wide.
You might have expected a little more from Falkirk in the last 10 minutes as they battled to save their status as title contenders. But then, perhaps not, with their substitutions consisting of two lost-looking 17-year-olds and a comparatively venerable 19-year-old. It really was no surprise, then, that Hamilton continued to dominate, eventually breaking upfield where Keatings thumped a well-saved shot only for Longridge to nod home the rebound.
"It doesn't matter how well you play," sighed Gary Holt, the Falkirk manager. "If you can't defend two corners that an under-10 side would defend then that's always going to cost you. We are down to our bare bones. We had boys out there today that shouldn't have been playing. But that's the nature of the beast."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article