Red-hot Killie close to safety after vital win

GOALS from Conor Sammon and Jordan Jones separated the sides at the Superseal Stadium and guaranteed that Kilmarnock can no longer finish bottom of the table.

The victory moved them six points clear of the play-off position and one more victory from their four remaining fixtures should see them retain their Premiership status.

Hamilton’s position is far less clear. Their defeat, coupled with Dundee’s surprising success at Fir Park, leaves them above second-bottom Motherwell only on goal difference.

For manager Martin Canning, the result was hard to accept.

He believed his players did not deserve to lose but accepts their fate will now not be decided until the final game of the campaign at home to Dundee.

‘We were sucker-punched,’ he claimed. ‘It was a strange game because we were probably the better team. We controlled a lot of the game when Kilmarnock sat back in the second half.

‘The match at Inverness on Saturday is now huge. I’ve always expected it to go to the wire. So it’s not as though we’ve been dragged into something we didn’t expect to be involved in — we knew there were going to be ups and downs.

‘It’s up to us now to go on and win next weekend and start to build some momentum again. We need to get back on the front foot against Inverness.’

Hamilton passed up a glorious opportunity to open the scoring in their first attack.

Blair Adams’ up-and-under caught the Kilmarnock defence flat-footed and Dougie Imrie latched on to it to drill a shot from 12 yards.

It looked like a certain goal but Freddie Woodman threw himself to his right to touch the ball against the inside of the far post. That proved to be a false dawn, however, as Lee McCulloch’s side began to take control of proceedings.

Sammon’s header from Greg Taylor’s cross shaved the crossbar before the big Irishman helped the visitors make the breakthrough in 11 minutes. Jones’ corner was worked to Steven Smith and, although the captain’s shot was cleared off the line by Ali Crawford, Sammon was on hand to slam home the rebound from point-blank range.

Killie doubled their lead from another set play.

Luke Hendrie’s throw-in was helped on by Kris Boyd and Jones volleyed home from eight yards.

Accies came close to pulling one back in the 33rd minute when Imrie threw himself at Scott McMann’s cross but goalkeeper Woodman managed to scramble his header behind for a corner.

Slack play from Jones cost the Ayrshire side the chance to secure the outcome in the 50th minute. The winger and Boyd were two versus one on a counter-attack but the former’s pass to play in Boyd was overhit and the opportunity was lost.

Jones was central to everything all afternoon and wanted a penalty when he went to ground as Georgios Sarris emerged with the ball. Referee Willie Collum was right to ignore the Englishman’s appeal.

Accies sub Eamonn Brophy was on target with a venomous drive from the edge of the penalty area but the impressive Gary Dicker typified the spirit of this Kilmarnock side by launching his body in front of the ball to block it.

He repeated the exercise to deny Rakish Bingham in similar circumstances and preserve the clean sheet.

Kilmarnock’s caretaker manager McCulloch was delighted that automatic relegation is no longer a possibility.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I haven’t looked at the table, so I don’t know how much we need to do.

‘It’s still a game at a time and we aren’t out of the woods yet.

‘Hamilton hit the post early due to one of our mistakes but I think we deserved it as after that we regrouped.

‘We scored a good goal from a set play that we’ve worked on all week and then we scored a great second goal.’