COVID SCARE FITNESS FEAR
Boss Rice concern over returning players
Boss Brian Rice admits the Hamilton stars impacted by the Covid scare at the club could miss this weekend’s clash with Dundee United.
Three first-team players who returned false positives and Lee Hodson, who came into contact with St Mirren goalkeeper Jak Alnwick who has the virus, missed the defeat to Kilmarnock last weekend.
While the Accies gaffer expects the players to be able to return to New Douglas Park this week, he can’t be certain they will be ready for Premiership action.
Rice said: “The players will be back but the question I have is, with no training for 14 days, will they be ready to play?
“Lee has been stuck in a room for 14 days, so it’s not even as if he could train.
“The players who had falsepositives last week have to go through a protocol to come back, and I’m not exactly sure if they will be available.
“I have to gauge the players and their well-being, and that comes before anything else.
“It would be fantastic to have them all fit and available, but I can’t say that I’m sure that will be the case.
“We can’t judge how they are physically and we can’t judge how they are mentally. We just take it as it comes and deal with it.”
Rice says the Accies stars will have learned their lesson after defeat to 10-man Killie as they prepare to face Micky Mellon’s side.
“We just didn’t show enough intensity in the game,” he said.
“Sometimes when you get the extra man you can just expect things to happen and it doesn’t work like that.
“You have got to go and make it happen and take the bull by the horns.
“That was my frustration, we got into areas we wanted to get into by we couldn’t execute the final pass.
“There is no excuses for the performance. We are professional enough to get on with it and we have a squad that is capable of dealing with that.
“The team would have been different if we had certain players available. Unfortunately it happened to us last week with the tests, but we had enough possession in that game to take something from it.
“Our quality wasn’t what I expected it to be and that wasn’t to do with anything that took place during the week.
“We know how difficult it will be against Dundee United. We need to try and get the points.”