Cuthbert bids to finally slay New Douglas ghost
KEVIN CUTHBERT is desperate for end-of-season dramas at New Douglas Park to pave an escape route to the Premiership this time around, after promotion agony at the Hamilton venue helped to extend his sentence in the second tier of Scottish football to a 12-year stretch.
The Accies goalkeeper was a St Johnstone player when a top-flight place was cruelly snatched away in 2007. Saints, under Owen Coyle, had won 4-3 at Hamilton Accies on the final day of the season.
They then endured five minutes of impatient suffering before learning that a James Grady goal deep into injury time at Ross County had earned Gretna the league title instead, with one of the last kicks of the long campaign.
Cuthbert was a Greenock Morton player by the time Derek McInnes took the Perth club up in 2009, then moved to Ayr United and is now in his second season seeking a step up with Accies.
The first dozen games of his senior career were with St Johnstone in 2001/02 in the then SPL. The next dozen years have been spent playing in the second tier.
Cuthbert has never been closer to a top-flight return than when he sat in the away dressing room at New Douglas Park on April 28, 2007 and waited for the outcome of the action in Dingwall as their championship rivals were being held 2-2.
‘It wasn’t like it is now with smart phones and stuff,’ he recalled. ‘We’re talking about a guy with a wee earpiece listening to a radio and it just came through that Gretna had scored because their game started five minutes late.
‘It was gut-wrenching. We were just basically sitting there waiting to be told we were champions. Instead you get told: “No you’re not, see you later”.
‘And we just went up the road after that. Gretna had won the league and that was the end of the season. It was a right disappointment, one that took a while to bounce back from, especially with the way that Gretna ended up.
‘Hopefully I can help Hamilton get to the Premiership this time.’
Hamilton host the second leg of the Premiership play-off semi-final today, five days after Cuthbert conceded an 80th-minute goal to Mark Beck at Falkirk to level the tie 1-1 and deny Accies a huge away win.
The 31-year-old has selfish reasons for wanting to make the leap at last but, after spending so much of his career out of the top-flight picture, he doesn’t want the young crop at Hamilton to be similarly denied the big days.
Ziggy Gordon, Ali Crawford, Grant Gillespie, Louis Longridge and Andy Ryan are a core of Alex Neil’s team at the age of 22 or under and Cuthbert believes now is the time for them to be granted a career springboard to the Premiership stage.
‘I wouldn’t say I set out in my career to win the Championship but, after being in it for so long and trying to achieve something, this becomes your main aim,’ he said. ‘To actually get a team promoted and bring these young boys up with me is a huge part of it. I’m 31, going on 32, I still have a bit of time left. But these boys have their whole careers ahead of them.
‘Being promoted now would give them a chance to progress.
‘For me, it would just be a case of, hopefully, helping them on their way and getting a couple of seasons out of the Premier League.’
Tuesday’s draw was an end-to-end affair and, with the tie level, the action is likely to be just as open today with a place in the two-legged Final against Hibernian at stake.
Cuthbert said: ‘For any neutral, Falkirk versus Hamilton is the best game in the Championship — two good, young teams, looking to try to play football.
‘Everybody was entertained the other night. There were chances galore. I think either of us would be an asset to the Premiership.’