Neil: I’ll make sure there’s no slacking!

Aug 23 2007 By Andy McGilvray

ALEX Neil insists his Hamilton team-mates won’t relax despite their 100 per cent record in the First Division ... because they’ll have him breathing down their necks if they do!

League leaders Accies head into Saturday’s clash with Morton at Cappielow looking to maintain their excellent start, and skipper Neil won’t settle for anything less than total effort.

The 26-year-old midfielder said: “I gave our assistant manager Stuart Taylor a bit of a roasting in the match against Dunfermline a couple of weeks ago, but that isn’t weird in any way.

“The gaffer and all of my team-mates know that if they’re not doing what’s required for the team then I’ll be on top of them. I expect the same if I’m not pulling my weight.

“I think successful teams are like that — some players like to get away with things but in our team if somebody isn’t pulling their weight they will be told about it.”

Neil is delighted with Hamilton’s three league wins over Dunfermline, Clyde and Queen of the South and hopes to continue that run in Greenock.

He said: “Morton will make it a tough game. They’ve started well and it’s going to be difficult but, to be honest, you don’t really get easy games in this league. One incident can sway it either way. We just hope we can pick the three points up again.”

Neil was pleased with Saturday’s 1-0 New Douglas Park win over Queens but felt it should have been more comprehensive.

He said: “We knew it was going to be a difficult match. In fact, we looked at their team on Friday and wondered why they hadn’t won a game yet.

“They’ve got a lot of good, experienced players but we knew that if we played well we had the capabilities to win the game.

“I thought we played really well for the first 35 minutes and then Queen of the South came into the game.

“I thought after we scored we slackened off for about 15 minutes.

“Credit to Queens for coming into the game and creating one or two chances of their own but over the piece I think we deserved to win the game.

“We controlled most of it and we should have scored at least one other goal. It was disappointing that we didn’t, but hopefully we’ve saved them up for other games.

“We’re playing well and winning games at the moment and we want to keep that going.”