RELIEF FOR HARTLEY AS DENS MEN END SLUMP
AT THE final whistle, Dundee’s 391 travelling supporters celebrated this win as though they had lifted a cup, while the players went into a huddle. Winning your first match since the opening day of the league campaign will have that affect on you.
Manager Paul Hartley was certainly a happy and relieved man after his side had edged to within a point of second-bottom Ross County.
‘I’m delighted for the players,’ he said.’ No matter what anybody says, we deserved that. The players took responsibility today. It was a game for rolling the sleeves up.
‘We’ve had a good few days in terms of speaking to one another. We were brutally honest about how we were performing and we said we were going to fix it together. We’re going to fight every day in training and every week.
‘By that, I don’t mean punches; I mean show a real desire and attitude. It was a different Dundee team today — it was a team which wanted it. The attitude was great all over the pitch.
‘They’re an honest bunch of players to work with and we’re going to be like this from now until the end of the season. We might not win every game but, as long as I see what I saw on the pitch today, I’ll be satisfied.’
Accies’ top scorer, Ali Crawford, should have added to his total after only 30 seconds. Grant Gillespie and Eamonn Brophy combined to provide him with a clear sight of goal but the midfielder blazed over the bar.
Hamilton manager Martin Canning believed that that miss was a pivotal moment.
‘We had a great chance in the first minute and we’ve got to score,’ he said. ‘I told the players at half-time that we had to take that chance.
‘Ali Crawford has been one of our top performers this year and chipped in with some big goals.
‘But with us starting this game on a high and Dundee being on a low, had we gone ahead in the opening 30 seconds it would have totally changed the outcome of the game. It was a big moment. After that, we just didn’t do enough.’
Just four minutes later, Dundee defender Julen Etxabeguren was equally wasteful, sending a free header wide from Tom Hateley’s corner-kick.
Craig Wighton was next to fail in front of goal. Hamilton’s rearguard parted like the Red Sea as the forward raced from inside his own half with the ball but, when he found himself faced with the advancing Gary Woods, he shot weakly wide.
Marcus Haber was next to miss, slicing a shot wide from six yards after Wighton picked him out with a cross from the left flank.
David Mitchell made the first save of the afternoon in the 54th minute, diving to his left to gather a 25-yarder from Greg Docherty.
However, the opener came at the other end. Paul McGowan claimed the credit, and at the very least merits an assist. He fired in a shot from the edge of the 18-yard box but it was the deliberate deflection by Canadian striker Haber which altered the ball’s direction and took it beyond Woods.
‘It’s Paul’s goal — we had a chat about it in the dressing room,’ said Hartley. ‘We needed that little bit of luck because we had chances in the first half and we were thinking it was going to be the same old story of us not taking them.
‘This is a difficult venue and probably nobody fancied us today — Hamilton probably thought we were going to come here and that we were going to be soft and roll over.
‘Well, we didn’t. We came with fight, desire and determination. There’s along way to go — we’ve had a bad first quarter, but we’ve started the second quarter with a result so we have to do that every week. We’re still down there but we showed today we have a little bit of guts.’
It could have been easier. Woods denied Haber the second goal when, at full stretch, he pushed out a low drive from the striker and Michael Devlin blocked Wighton’s effort from the rebound.
Substitute Danny Redmond had a half-chance to level the scoreline but waited too long to get his shot away and, by the time he let fly, his attempt was blocked by two defenders.
Hamilton team-mates Darian MacKinnon and skipper Michael Devlin squared up to each other on the pitch in the dying seconds, but Canning played down the importance of the bust-up.
‘That was just passion and, when things aren’t going well, it can get that way but I don’t mind that as long as it doesn’t get out of hand,’ he said.
‘It’s part of the game — Alex Neil was my best mate but we’d go head-to-head on occasion. I want to see guys hurting when they’re not performing well.’