Jesus full of faith now snarl-up is behind him

NO amount of training-ground and fitness drills involving cones could have prepared a tormented Jesus Garcia Tena for the task of circumnavigating such a proliferation of the cursed items a fortnight ago.

The Hamilton defender was removed from the team and benched by manager Martin Canning following a panicstricken phone call from the Spaniard to advise he was snarled up in nightmare roadworks

Within a couple of miles of New Douglas Park, Garcia Tena could smell the hotdogs on Lanarkshire derby day but the approach was so slow that he had no adequate time to prepare for starting the contest.

Accies officially revealed their line-up change while the 25-year-old remained in hold-up hell on

the M8 in the Shotts-Newhouse roadworks.

‘I left Edinburgh at 12 o’clock to be here,’ stated Garcia Tena (right). ‘I am normally here at quarter-past one.

‘The journey usually takes an hour. And that took me three hours. There was nothing I could do, I left with enough time.

‘The gaffer said to me try to arrive but that if I couldn’t, then I’d need to go on the bench.’

Garcia Tena eventually replaced Darren Lyon with 15 minutes remaining of a 1-0 victory, one of five wins that have helped Hamilton into the top half of the table. Favourites to finish bottom before a ball was kicked, the form lines of the start to manager Canning’s spell in charge after replacing Alex Neil suggested a struggle of second-season syndrome.

However, one year on from the victory at Celtic Park that sent them soaring to the top of the Premiership, they meet again with Hamilton through that rookie transition of 12 games without a win. Rushes to judgment are de rigueur in football boardrooms and would have served notice on Canning in the majority of cases on the back of that record.

Not at Accies where appreciation and understanding filtered all the way down from the hierarchy to the players’ camp, where support for Canning to succeed was great.

Garcia Tena explained: ‘The start for the manager, I think, was really hard. To make the change from being a full-time player and into a coach. He needed that period of time to let everything settle and start again.

‘The board is very close to us, they come every week here to see us. So we could feel the gaffer was going to get his time.

‘Obviously, doing that was the right decision. After the split, it turned round and now we are having a good season again.’