Fan drama overshadows epic Hamilton comeback
HAMILTON ACADEMICAL ............. 5 (5) ALLOA ATHLETIC ............................ 2 (3)
Hamilton Accies boss John Rankin has blasted a fan who shouted a‘vile’comment to him during their epic 5-3 aggregate victory over Alloa Athletic in Saturday’s Championship playoff semi-final.
Rankin was far from happy with one supporter who crossed a line with comments about his wife and children, as Alloa led 2-0 at New Douglas Park and 3-0 in the tie at the time.
The hosts mounted an astonishing comeback after Alloa went down to 10 men when ex-accie George Stanger saw red in 24 minutes for a second booking.
Andy Winter hit a hat-trick and Dario
Zanatta bagged a brace, with four of the five goals coming in the final nine minutes of the first half.
But that heroic effort was overshadowed by the actions of a few fans.
And Rankin, whose side now face Airdrie in the final, said: “I’m fine, batter me, but the comment was derogatory towards my wife and my children, and I’m not accepting that.
“I don’t care who that is, or what they try and do, that’s embarrassing.
“See the supporters who are on my back, no bother; attack me, don’t attack my family.
“I’m not accepting that, that is embarrassing.
“If that’s the type of person who comes in here as our supporter I don’t think they should come back.
“But the rest of the supporters got behind us and I appreciate that.
“That comment was when we were 2-0 down and I could have lost my focus and the players could have seen that. “That’s a disgrace. That’s not right.” In terms of the performance, Rankin was delighted to see his side overturn not only a 1-0 first leg deficit, but also the 3-0 gap in a hostile atmosphere after Conor Sammon and Stefan Scougall seemingly had the Wasps in the final.
Rankin said: “We’ve been working since last Friday on scoring goals, getting bodies in the box, creating chances, and making sure it was all about that.
“We had to, we’ve been doing it all season, creating chances and not taking them, and today we did.
“We were ruthless when they came our way, I can only maybe think of two chances off the top of my head that we didn’t take.
“We were 3-0 down in the tie, we could have been impatient, could have got erratic, could have let the crowd turning against us get to us – because they turned against us, let’s be honest, with the noise in the stadium – it was hostile.
“But I knew with the team we selected today that we had players that could pass the ball, handle the ball, and were able to create opportunities.
“The camaraderie they have, the respect they show one another, that came through this afternoon at a challenging time.
“We’ve had opportunities here this season that we haven’t taken against 10 men, and we learned our lesson today.”