Alex climbs out his sickbed to claim a top
Schalk (left) celebrates with Graham Alex Schalk last night swapped a stomach bug for the scoring one after gaffer Jim McIntyre pleaded with him to get out his sickbed and seal top-six football.
The Dutch frontman, whose 90thminute strike earned Ross County’s first piece of major silverware last month, netted 14 minutes in as the Dingwall outf it capitalised on Dundee’s disaster at Hamilton.
However, the Man of the Match – who had been suffering for three days with a vomiting bug – only pulled on a jersey after McIntyre begged him just hours earlier to lead County’s top-six charge.
McIntyre said: “At one point Alex wasn’t playing this morning as he was ill. He phoned me up to say he wouldn’t be able to play but I told Alex we needed him.
“Several Hearts players just got on with it for similar reasons on Friday. We needed the wee man to do that and he has come up with the winning goal.
“He had a vomiting bug on Wednesday and stayed away on Thursday. He did some work in the gym on Friday but was still feeling ill this morning despite getting some food back down him.
“But I told him it wasn’t an option and he was playing. He deserves credit for having the character to play and score the winner.
“We made no secret at the start of the season that one of our main objectives was to make the top six.
“This club has been fighting against relegation and staying up on the last day or with a game to spare for the last few years. It was a key objective to move on from that.
“We have been in the top six all season and fell out of it with a week to go, which would have been sore to take. But we knew all the games were going to be tough with every team having something to play for.
“We gave ourselves it all to do but the one thing about this team this season has been the character. It wasn’t pretty but we got there.”
Partick gave it everything but hit a brick wall after waves of secondhalf pressure came to nothing.
With only a few minutes played, Scott Fox – back between the sticks after six weeks out with a knee injury – took pelters from a Partick