Stephen Hendrie has revealed the secret of Hamilton Academicals' wonderful start to the season by insisting the more they are written off, the greater the determination they have to prove people wrong, writes Mark Walker.

Hamilton have won four Premiership games in a row and the full-back, who has been called up for Billy Stark's Under-21 squad for tomorrow's Euro qualifier in Slovakia, said: "We love hearing that. When you hear people saying you are going to lose every week and be relegated, it just makes you want to prove them wrong.

"When everyone tipped us to go down, it just made us hungrier to go out and show them. We go out every week and say 'we're not the team that's going down. We're Hamilton Accies and we're staying up.'

"Our goal is to stay up but we don't want just to look back the way, we just keep looking forward. The manager has told us that when people say we are going to be the team to get relegatewd, then it's up to us to prove them wrong. And if we keep winning games, then we are certainly doing that.

"The gaffer [Alex Neil] loves to win. That's just the type of guy he is. It doesn't matter who we are playing against, he wants to win."