Buddies aren’t our friends after giving Hoops a real fright
BY ANTHONY HAGGERTY HAMILTON boss Brian Rice revealed he is more wary of facing St Mirren than Celtic.
Accies lost 1-0 to Neil Lennon’s side last weekend but earned plaudits for making the Hoops scrap all the way to protect their perfect Premiership start.
Rice will take his men half-an-hour along the road to Paisley this Saturday in search of only their second win of the league campaign.
And the 55-year-old insists having raised the bar against the champions he will demand nothing less than a repeat – which even he is not exempt from.
Rice said: “I always think the next game after an Old Firm game is a dangerous one. If you lose heavily you come in with a bit of the eye of the tiger.
“I’m always conscious when you have a decent performance and people are giving you a wee pat on the back even though you lose, you don’t get carried away and get back to work.
“I’ve always been very wary that way and we need to make sure we have our feet on the ground and have that work ethic. It’s trying to get them back down to earth and back to business.
“I’ve seen it lots and lots of times down the years and I’ve been involved many times where you’ve gone in after a good display against the Old Firm and the following week you fall flat on your face.
“You’re still in that wee bubble and we can’t have that. How do we do that? Hard work.
“I’m not harder on the players because I’m hard all the time. I make demands of them all the time and I demand it from myself. I’m the leader and it comes from me.”