THE personnel involved may be different but Ross County will he hopeful this richly merited victory prompts the kind of New Year revival that has served them so well in the past.
So often, January has proven to be a critical month for the Highlanders, as squads have been revamped and hope rekindled. Now into February and deep in trouble at the foot of the table after a run of 13 games without success, they were at it again on Saturday to close to within three points of Hamilton Academical.
Though the goalscorers, Davis Keillor-Dunn, Alex Schalk and Tim Chow, are not recent additions, the arrival of the likes of David N’Gog, Liam Fontaine, Harry Souttar and Mattias Kait, the on-loan Fulham midfielder, appear – on this evidence – to have revitalised those already at the club.
“It’s easy to say that you will keep grafting and you need to stick together, but it was hard,” admitted Schalk, who drove in a second-half double following his brace against Aberdeen in midweek. “But we have got a good squad and we've helped that with a couple of good signings too. So there's a lot of boys now who can start and we will have to fight to get a place in the team.
“Obviously, I am really satisfied that we won. A win like that gives you a huge boost. What happened before is a closed book now. Now we get to play Hearts with confidence.”
The fantastic Keillor-Dunn whipped in the opener for County three minutes after the interval, only for Kerr Waddell to head home Dundee’s equaliser eight minutes later.
However, a mix-up between Waddell and substitute Lewis Spence gifted Schalk a free run on goal for County’s second, which was followed three minutes later by a superb third as Schalk speared into the net following Keillor-Dunn’s back-heel. Chow iced the cake with a fourth in injury-time, again from Keillor-Dunn’s assist.
Dundee, who handed on-loan Hibs striker Simon Murray his debut, lost Jack Hendry following his big-money move to Celtic and Scott Allan to Hibernian before the window closed, but captain Darren O’Dea refused to hide behind any excuses.
“We were absolutely fully prepared, we felt great going into the game on the back of two wins,” he said. “Confidence was high so there was no distraction – it was down to what happened on the day.”
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