Sparkling Accies have Well in their pockets
O’hara (pen 67) HAMILTON ACCIES 4 Anderson (7), Callachan (pen 18), Ogkmpoe (31), Moyo (64) Fir Park might have been almost empty, but it was not hard to imagine missing Accies supporters querying whether they could play their Lanarkshire rivals every week.
Of Hamilton’s halfdozen wins in the 2020-21 Premiership campaign, three have come against Motherwell.
That is 50% in old money and, if the statistic is not startling enough on its own, consider the breakdown of the matches.
Manager Brian Rice’s men have now scored eight times across the three derby games, while conceding just once.
It is the sort of dominance you might expect of the league leaders against a team fighting to avoid the drop.
From a team battling against relegation against a team above them it is remarkable.
Or frankly embarrassing, depending on which side of the divide you are coming from.
Only one of the losses has occurred on Graham Alexander’s watch, not that you
would have known it to listen to the manager’s outpourings on the sidelines.
He howled long and loud and was also sent off by David Munro, who clearly felt he had warned him often enough.
Not that victorious Accies boss Brian Rice cared.
“I don’t know what it is about the derby,” he said.
“Personally, I love coming here. I loved coming here as a player and I love coming here to watch football.
“My boys were up for it and I could not have asked any more from them today.
“They know what it is going to take to stay in this league and, hopefully, that is the start of things to come.”
His team made an electrifying start to the game and, having established dominance, never let up.
Had the Accies manager scripted it himself, it could scarcely have gone better.
They grabbed the lead with a goal that was as simple as it was clinical. Ross Callachan was worked free on the left and, from his neat cutback, Bruce Anderson stabbed home from a few yards out.
Callachan, playing in the hole behind Anderson and Marius Okmpoe, was very lively all day and had was at the heart of the game’s pivotal moment.
It was his clever movement that lured Stephen O’donnell into the foul that earned the
Scotland defender the red card with less than a quarter of the game gone.
It didn’t end there, either. Referee David Munro awarded Accies a penalty for the pull as well as the benefit of numerical advantage.
Callachan stepped up to take it himself and smashed confidently home, but was ordered to retake the kick because the ball had not been on the spot.
But, if it was a test of character, he passed it with flying colours, beating Liam Kelly with his second attempt almost as comfortably as he had with his first.
Motherwell rallied for a while, but fell into even deeper trouble when two became three before the break.
This time it was Marius Ogkmpoe, the other member of Accies’ impressive new strike pairing, who helped himself when smashing a right-foot shot home under the close attentions of Bevis Mugabi.
Then, when it was all looking a bit flat, his team got a fourth thanks to his inspired substitution, with David Moyo clipping home from Scott Mcmann’s cross.
Motherwell scored one of their own, Mark O’hara scoring from the penalty spot after Jamie Hamilton fouled Devante Cole in the box, but that felt not so much a consolation, more like a neighbourly gesture.