WHEN you miss a sitter and have a goal denied to you by a save that on August 1 could well go down as the best of the season in a game when your team couldn’t beat ten men, it’s fair to say that the first day back at work could not have gone much worse.

This all happened to Ali Crawford of Hamilton Academical and his face after the match wore the expression of someone fed-up with life.

Yet, the midfielder put in a performance of such guile, intelligence and positivity against Partick Thistle that it made you realise why people go to football in the first place. A goal-less draw between two bottom six sides might not sound great, but thanks to Crawford and a few others this was a game worth being at.

He is 24 now, not old but old enough to make you wonder why nobody has come in for him. He is closing in on his 200th game for the Accies and has never looked in better nick. Indeed, for a team who are supposed to roll over and die this season, the men from New Douglas Park looked more than capable of doing okay.

Christian Nade, for example, has spent much of his time in Scottish football producing a turn of pace normally associated with the movement of icebergs.

His attitude has been frequently criticised, as has his weight, and there was even the rather frank admission when he signed for Hamilton this summer that he did not always give his all when at Hearts. Something magical has happened to the Frenchman. It’s a new Nade for a new season.

The striker was terrific here, the ball stuck to him no matter what area of the body it was played into. He always seemed to find that extra space and gave Partick Thistle’s defenders as far harder time than they would have expected.

There is much to like and admire about this new slimmed down version of Nade and for a team tipped by just about everyone to go down, there was a lot to give Hamilton’s supporters encouragement. Except for all their possession and the fact Thistle played with ten men for a large part of the match, they couldn’t score

“The match was really frustrating, especially since we had so many chances to score. It’s just one of those things,” said Crawford. “We need to take the positives from it. We completely dominated the game – even when they had 11 men."

Frederic Frans of Thistle got himself sent off on 25 minutes for two bookable offences meaning the Glasgow side spent most of the match on the back foot.

Crawford should have scored before half-time, he missed the target from ten yards after being found by Dougie Imrie’s cutback and then in the latter stages, Tomas Cerny in the Partick goal somehow got his left hand to the midfielder’s shot a fraction before it was going to cross the line.

"It was a great save, but I should have scored with the chance I had in the first half. That was a sitter for me,” Crawford said. “But we all know Tomas do that – he pulled of saves like that for us on a regular basis. So I will just need to take it on the chin, because it was a top save.

“I don’t know what happened (at this first opportunity). I should have hit the target and, in the end, it probably cost us the three points. Everyone wrote us off last year and we went out and proved them wrong, so we just need to go and do the same again this season.”

It was difficult to judge where Alan Archibald’s Thistle are right now. They began sluggishly and then defended stoutly, if at times fortunately, once down to ten men. Had Cerny not had a blinder, they would have lost.

“It was a good shot which came through a lot of bodies. I reacted to it a bit late and I was happy to just touch it over the bar,” said the Czech about the moment of the match. “It was one of my best-ever saves and one of the most important ones I can remember making.

2I knew that the opposition would get chances to score against me – that is natural when you have 10 men playing against 11. But we did well to organise ourselves and react in the right manner to fight and earn a point from the game.”

Cerny was at Hamilton when James McArthur and James McCarthy became stars and can see similar things happening at this former club now.

He said: "A lot of the players who were just coming through the ranks when I was at Hamilton have now established themselves in the first team. Guys like Ali Crawford, Ziggy Gordon and Gils (Grant Gillespie) were just young boys when I arrived at the club a few years ago but have proved themselves to be really good players.”

The Accies may have a fighting chance after all.