EVEN with the experience of veteran midfielder Darian MacKinnon in there, the average age of the Hamilton Accies starting line-up on Saturday afternoon was just 22. As a coming of age exercise this one was a fairly sobering experience for the emerging talent that is on its way out of Accies’ academy.

For the bulk of the afternoon they chased shadows and worked on lost causes but their fate was sealed just 20 minutes into this one when 17-year-old Jamie Hamilton was penalised twice under this season’s contentious handball legislation; dismissed and with a penalty conceded to rub salt in the wound after Liam Polworth’s header came off his arm on the line it was the death knell for any aspirations Hamilton had of taking anything from the game.

By the time the teenager made the lonely walk up the tunnel he might well have been joined by the rest of his team-mates. In fairness Accies pulled a goal back when the same rule was enforced at the other end when Peter Hartley, scorer of the opening goal, was judged to have handled but was not sanctioned with a card for his offence.

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In any case, any lingering hopes of a comeback were shortlived. Motherwell restored their two goal cushion in the immediate aftermath of the break when Chris Long manipulated an exhausted Accies defence to curl in a third and for the second period the Fir Park side dictated the ebb and flow of the game as they worked the numerical advantage to their favour. 

It was the first league win of the campaign for a Motherwell side who dominated this one with plenty of food for thought for Stephen Robinson. The Fir Park manager had lamented a sick bug that had gone through the changing room in the build-up to the game but there were no obvious signs of it in the performance.

The illness kept out Richard Tait and Jake Carroll meant a first league start in eight months for Hartley with the Motherwell captain keen on hanging on to the shirt. “I’ve had to be patient and waited for my chance but I’ve scored a goal, we won as a team against our rivals in a convincing performance and hopefully I put myself into contention for next Saturday,” said the defender. “It was mentally challenging [to be out of the team] , but I’m 31 years old and  played over 300 games so I’ve seen it all before.”

What he hasn’t seen until this season is the application of strict handball rules that could well see penalties awarded with significant frequency.

“I went to a referee meeting with Keith Lasley in Edinburgh a few weeks ago and the guy said if there are any handballs at all then they are going to get given,” he remarked. “[For the one I conceded] the boy stepped on my toe. I’ve gone ‘ouch’ and he just flicked the ball and it hit my hand. I accepted it but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Fortunately, we’ve managed to get a third goal in the second half to ease the pressure.

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“They say keep your hands in a natural position but you wrestle with people sometimes – that is a natural position. A lot of penalties will get given. I was too far away to see our penalty but I was told it would’ve been a goal. I felt it was the right decision, but at the same time what can the lad do about it?”

Accies captain MacKinnon had a bit of sympathy for Hamilton whom he acknowledged would have had a difficult Saturday night turning over the events of the game.

“Nothing fazes Jamie but he’ll be gutted and he probably won’t have slept on Saturday night,” he said. “But we’ve all been there – I’ve been sent off for stupid tackles and that’s worse because I could have done something about that but there was nothing he could have done. He’ll be fine.

“This new rule, though....if you’re going to give a penalty then just make it a yellow card. It’s not as if he was diving like a goalkeeper to keep it out – the ball just hit him. It would have been impossible for him to have meant it.

“Jamie said the ball hit him in the shoulder but I haven’t seen a replay. There wasn’t much he could have done about it because he was only three yards away. This new rule went against us but, hopefully, it’ll go for us at some point this season.

“The penalty was bad enough but the red card was a hammer blow. We hadn’t started too brightly but there’s no doubt in my mind that we would have come more into it if we’d had a full team on the pitch.”