McCarthy: We can take the points at Parkhead

Oct 2 2008 by Andrew McGilvray, Hamilton Advertiser

JAMES McCarthy insists Hamilton are confident of heading to Celtic Park and taking all three points against the SPL champions.

The 17-year-old midfielder admits it’s a dream come true to be heading into battle with Gordon Strachan’s side in the white-hot cauldron at Parkhead, but reckons there’s no better place to exorcise the demons of Saturday’s 4-1 defeat at Falkirk.

He said: “It’s a blow to have lost the game but I’m sure we’ll pick ourselves up again. It’s not an excuse, but it has been a hard week for us.

“It’s disappointing to go to Falkirk and lose four goals, but we’ll dust ourselves down and look forward to Celtic Park.

“The gaffer is saying that we can bounce back, and he’s right – we can go there and take three points, but even a draw is a great result at Parkhead.

“We’ll go into the game confident even though it was a disappointing result on Saturday – a bad day at the office, I would say.

“Everybody’s looking forward to Saturday’s game; it’s a dream come true to play at Celtic Park, so we’ll get a buzz from that and hopefully that will take us through to get us the points.”

McCarthy was understandably disappointed to have lost last weekend’s game, but reckons it was a blip, and that Accies are holding their own in the top flight.

He said: “It’s been a great start to the season for us, but it was a disappointing result on Saturday.

“People were writing us off before the season even started, but we’ve shown that we can handle the SPL. It’s a step up and, now and then, the pace is a lot faster, but – no disrespect to the First Division – it’s a higher standard of player.

“However, I think we’ve adapted to it and I’m sure we can stay in this league and do well.

“We like to get the ball down and pass it, like we did in the first half at Falkirk, but then they scored bang on half-time and that killed us.

“We had a couple of chances before they went 2-0 up, and after Stephen Ettien hit the post with a header the chance fell behind me, or otherwise I could have got us back level. But it knocked the stuffing out of us when that second goal went in.

“It was disappointing but we’ll learn from it and hopefully look forward to Saturday.”

Hamilton were also handed a trip to the other half of the Old Firm, holders Rangers, in the Co-operative Insurance Cup quarter-final draw, with the match taking place at Ibrox on Tuesday, October 28.

McCarthy is excited about that pairing and said: “It will be a great game. Ibrox is a great place to go, it’ll be an excellent atmosphere there, and I’m looking forward to that.”