HAVE you ever seen anything like it?
Hamilton Academical were magnificent, incisive, deadly, rampant - they might have scored more - but all their glorious attacking could not quite make up for the dropped points of the week before. Time and time again, the hapless Morton defence melted in the face of an onslaught. The home side, somehow, won 10-2. But it was not enough.
"I've got a range of emotions," said Alex Neil, the Hamilton manager. "Disappointment is one. Pride, in how they went about their business. Astonishment at the scoreline and how many goals were scored. To come so close ... if Dumbarton had scored we would have won the title.
"The players never gave up. They ran themselves into the ground. We had to take some of the players off because their legs had just cramped up; they had given so much for the cause. Regardless of how you lose a league, it's always painful.
"We did our job today, we made Dundee win the game. For that to happen...before the game, if you said that to anybody they would have laughed at you. It was absolutely astonishing what they did today."
The equaliser at Dens Park, waited for with baited breath by the anxious crowd, never came. "Dumbarton," they chanted. A draw would send Dundee into the SPFL Premiership, the sages had declared before the game. They were wrong.
The last time anyone reached double figures in the Scottish second tier was Motherwell in 1955. The four goals scored by Mickael Antoine-Curier overshadowed the hat-trick of Tony Andreu. Stuart Findlay scored an own goal. Louis Longridge - a star in the making - scored another. Mikey Devlin thumped a header back across goal. Grant Gillespie got seven - yes, seven - assists.
"I didn't realise that," the midfielder grinned. "When you take corners and the big boys head them in then it's always good. I didn't really think about it."
Even when Morton managed a couple, they were scored by one that Hamilton regard as their own. Dougie Imrie's name was chanted by the home fans as he walked off. The play-offs await. No-one will want to come to New Douglas Park.
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