ACCIESWANT CLEANSWEEP
Butbosssayspastmeansnothingin‘wellclash
Hamilton boss Brian Rice has warned his relegation battlers that past derby results will count for nothing when they clash with Motherwell next midweek.
Accies, who are idle this weekend, have won all three clashes with their local rivals this term, with a 1-0 triumph at Fir Park back in August, followed by a 3-0 win at New Douglas Park in January and a 4-1 thrashing of 10-man ‘Well in February.
In fact, Hamilton are undefeated in their last five derbies against Motherwell, with four wins and a draw in that sequence.
The last time the Steelmen came out on top was at New Douglas Park on August 24, 2019, when they won 3-1.
But Rice says none of that matters, and simply hopes to take the performance from Saturday’s 1-0 defeat against Dundee United into the match.
Accies shipped an early goal to United and then passed up several chances, and on April 21 Rice will be looking for a better end product.
Rice, who faces an SFA rap for comments made about referees, said: “It always is an interesting game, a derby match, and the past results count for nothing, it’s on the night.
“The thing that gives us hope is the way we’re playing at the minute and the chances we’re creating.
“That’s as far as I’ll look, I looked back on Saturday, saw how well we played, saw the chances we created, so that gives us plenty of belief and plenty of hope.
“We hope to take the positives from Saturday into next week’s game.
“We created a lot of chances and the frustration was that we didn’t take several of them.
“I thought our play deserved that, and we feel a wee bit aggrieved that we never got anything from the match.
“You’d like to think that if we had taken some of our chances then we would have got the three points.”
Rice added: “Performances have been good lately, the only thing that’s been missing is the most important thing, and that is goals.
“We’re trying to address that, to keep playing as well as we have been, and take our chances when they come along.
“We take the positives from the last few performances, and hopefully we can put an end
product on it.”hamilton follow up their midweek clash with a trip to St Mirren on Saturday, May 1, visit Ross County on May 12, and end the campaign at home to Kilmarnock, as they look to avoid at least the play-off.
Hamilton’s casualty list has been well-documented, and to that end goalkeeper Ryan Fulton was due to go for a scan on his knee injury, while Nathan Thomas has resumed light training.
Rice added:“at this stage it’s too early to say if we’ll have people back, we’ve still got a number of days [until the game],”he said.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll have more bodies to put on the bench, but who that is I don’t know. It’s too early in the week to even go down that route.
“Nathan Thomas is back doing a little bit of running but he hasn’t joined in any training yet.
“I’m hopeful that in the next week or two that we can get Nathan back on the training pitch with the squad, rather than training on his own.
“We’ve got a 24-man squad, we’ve got 10 men out injured and a lot of them are first-team choices.
“I don’t think any other team in the country – considering the size of the squad – could put up with the amount of injuries that we’ve had.”