POWER OUT OF OUR HANDS
Irishman knows from past experience how relegation battles can go on final day
HAMILTON ACADEMICAL V KILMARNOCK
THE level was far lower and the s t a ke s nowhere near as high, but Alan Power, t he K ilmarnock midfielder, will still draw on the experience of a relegation dogfig ht he gai ned at hi s former club greatly today.
The Irishman is confident that what he went through with Lincoln City in the Blue Square Premier League back in the 2012/13 season will serve him well in what promises to be an unbearably tense meeting with Hamilton at the FOYS Stadium this afternoon.
He is, too, optimistic the final outcome will be just as favourable. He scored penalties in Lincoln’s final two games against Tamworth and then Hyde to ensure they remained in the fifth tier of the English league set-up. The Imps took devilish delight in their great escape.
The predicament that Kilmarnock are in is different. They need to win today and hope that Motherwell can defeat Ross County at Fir Park in order to avoid being dragged into the two-legged Premiership play-off final. However, Power knows from personal experience it is foolish to write off any side regardless of how hopeless their plight appears.
“I’ve been in a relegation battle before at Lincoln,” he said. “True, it was in our own hands at that stage. We’ve slipped up in too many games at Kilmarnock for that to be the case. But there’s the same pressure there and we need to rise to it. This is what football is all about, we’re fighting for something, we need to be men about it and face it. We did that at Lincoln and stayed up. Hopefully that’s a good omen.
“Obviously there’s pressure involved – we know there is – but we have to thrive off it. Pressure can be no bad thing. We need to use that to try and get the best out of everybody, put a big performance in and hope that Motherwell do us a favour.
“We didn’t want it to be like this, but it’s the situation we’ve got ourselves in and we’ve to dig ourselves out of it. So we invite the pressure on because we’re going to have to rise to the occasion.”
Power, the 33-year-old ball winner from Dublin, has become a cult hero to Kilmarnock fans since arriving in Scotland back in 2017. He feels strongly about the Ayrshire outfit himself, has been distraught at their difficult campaign and will do whatever it takes to keep them in the Premiership.
“We know how big this is for the fans, the people here,” he said. “This is my fourth year so I know what the club means to everybody. I know how big the club is and we’re all fighting for the same thing.
“If people on the outside don’t think that, then they’re wrong. We are working hard every day and we need to go and put that in at Hamilton, do our best, go win the game and hopefully keep this club where it needs to be.”
The goals that Kyle Lafferty has supplied since signing a short-term deal back in February – the Northern Ireland internationalist took his tally to 12 in just 10 games with a double in the 3-3 draw with St Mirren on Wednesday night – give Power hope that Kilmarnock can avoid relegation.
He appreciates, though, that Tommy Wright’s charges must defend far, far better than they have in recent weeks and stop conceding such cheap goals to achieve their objective.
“Kyle has brought us a lot of goals,” he said. “He doesn’t train very well through the week so I feel like he owes us that on a game day! But he does. That’s when he provides and that’s all we can ask of him.
“It’s a good feeling to have and important to have a biggame player. Every team needs them – and we’ve got one in Kyle. We just need to keep him right, keep providing those balls because he seems to stick them away for us.”
Meanwhile, Accies captain Brian Easton wants to bookend his Hamilton career with another promotion next season.
The defender came through the youth set-up at Accies and, along with fellow youngsters James McArthur and James McCarthy, won the then Scottish First Division championship in 2008 to reach the top flight.
Now aged 33, Easton – in his third spell with the Lanarkshire club after also playing with Burnley, Dundee and St Johnstone – is set to return to the second tier of Scottish football next season. Hamilton need to beat Kilmarnock by nine goals to leapfrog into the play-off spot.
Easton, looking ahead to next season and having started his coaching badges with a view to the longer-term future, said: “We won the league in 2008, a long time ago.
“I know what it takes to win a league which hopefully will be helpful. I know how difficult it can be – it is a totally different challenge to staying up.”
There’s pressure involved but we have to thrive off it