Defiant Kenny Miller has vowed not to give in on his advancing years as he sets his sights on grabbing more goals for Dundee.
The 38-year-old former Scotland star stole the show with a stunning hat-trick allied to Jesse Curran's second-half strike in Wednesday night's 4-0 destruction of Hamilton which gave Jim McIntyre his first Premiership win at the Dens Park helm.
Miller looked every inch the razor-sharp striker defenders have dreaded facing over the years, and the veteran forward feels he's every bit as fit as he was at any time throughout his glittering career.
The Dark Blues fans' favourite is now gearing up to go head-to-head with old club Rangers in Sunday's televised Tayside showdown, brimming with confidence that he can once more do the business when it matters most.
“I feel great. I don’t want to give in to time," said Miller. "I train as hard as I can every day and I try not to take too many days off.
“If you do that I think you are starting to admit you are not capable. For me, at the minute, I am enjoying playing football.
“I felt this result was coming and it just gets us that bit closer and into the mix. I feel great and long may it continue.”
It was Miller's first hat-trick since his Rangers days when he disposed of Dumbarton almost three years ago, but admits it was all about claiming those elusive three points and smashing their home hoodoo in their quest for Premiership survival.
He added: "The last one was at Dumbarton away when we were in the Championship and it came just after Christmas.
"It's nice to get the goals. It was nice to get the first goal a couple of weeks ago and then against Hibs and now to get a hat-trick is pleasing, but it was all about the result.
"I'm delighted for the lads. We've also got a clean sheet and we defended well on the night.
“It's an accumulation of all the hard work we have put in since the manager has come in over the last six or seven weeks.
“There have been good performances over the past three or four weeks.
“Motherwell away we upped our performance and Hibs and St Mirren, for me, we should have come away with at least one win from those two games. This was a well-earned victory.”
Miller is relishing Sunday's visit of his former club and knows Steven Gerrard's men will be like a wounded animal in the wake of their bitter defeat by rivals Aberdeen at Ibrox in midweek.
He said: "“It will be a tough game because they are a good team. They had a disappointing result at home and they will be hurting from losing to Aberdeen.
“I am sure the manager will be looking for a response. At big clubs, when you have a negative result, you need to respond and we need to be prepared for that response and to match it head on.
“Off the last three games, though, we can take a lot of heart and confidence.”
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 here