THE Hamilton bubble remains very much intact.
A third successive defeat in the space of a week would undoubtedly have raised questions about whether this was the start of a slide down the table, but any doubts over the resilience of Alex Neil's team were answered in emphatic style here.
They trailed 3-2 as the clock ticked into the fourth minute of injury time, but one last chance presented itself. Tony Andreu did not waste it, lashing a low shot into the corner beyond Scott Fox. It was not enough to keep them at the top of the table, but ably demonstrated they are a side capable of digging in for a result and not simply folding when all seems lost.
Andreu's late intervention sparked scenes of joy in the home stand and brought about a mood of devastation in the away end. A first league win on the road had seemed to be heading Partick Thistle's way after they recovered from falling two goals behind to surge into a 3-2 lead on the back of an impressive second-half performance. Few could have quibbled if they had held on for the win, but Hamilton had other ideas.
The incredible topsy-turvy game that unfolded had looked unlikely when the home side scored twice within the space of 78 first-half seconds. The first goal arrived after 21 minutes. Ali Crawford began the move, threading a pass through to Dougie Imrie who in turn found Darian MacKinnon. The midfielder's shot from the edge of the box zipped into the corner of the net. Thistle barely had time to gather their thoughts before Mickael Antoine-Curier supplied Danny Redmond, who hooked a shot past Fox.
Having lost 6-0 to Celtic earlier in the week, Thistle must have been worried that another heavy defeat lay in wait but instead, they found a lifeline. It came from the most unlikely of sources, Jordan McMillan creeping forward from right-back to unleash a shot that thundered past Michael McGovern with the aid of a deflection. Thistle were off the floor and back in the fight.
And it was a fight, the match becoming increasingly disjointed as the fouls, bookings and petty squabbles mounted up. The greater physical approach evidently suited Thistle as they enacted a remarkable turnaround. The equaliser arrived after 68 minutes, Steven Lawless feeding a pass to James Craigen who rolled his finish beyond McGovern. Four minutes later Christie Elliott was given room to shoot and he made Hamilton pay, before taking off his top to display a T-shirt in memory of a friend.
"I had been wanting to do that celebration for a while," he explained. "It was for my best friend Aaron Todd, who passed away when I was younger. It was his dream to become a professional so every day I'm doing it for him as well."
That had looked like being the winning goal until Andreu's late, late riposte. "It was a good goal, but we should never have been in that position and we can't be happy with our performance," said the Frenchman. "When you are two goals up you can't afford to lose three goals and we were fortunate to come back at the end."
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