Neil: Survival is now in our own hands

Apr 23 2009 by Andrew McGilvray, Hamilton Advertiser

HAMILTON captain Alex Neil believes the post-split fixtures have been good to Hamilton and said survival is in their own hands.

Neil knows that Accies need to pick up at least two wins from the five games to be sure of survival and he’s confident they can do so.

Accies kick off their survival bid with a home match against Kilmarnock on May 2, and will also entertain Falkirk and Motherwell. Their away games will be against Inverness and St Mirren.

Neil (27), said: “I think the fixtures are quite good because we’ve got three home games and we couldn’t really have asked for any better than that.

“The Kilmarnock game is an important one but Kevin Kyle is suspended for that so that’s an advantage as he’s a big guy.

“We’ve also got Falkirk at home, which we’re happy about.

“It’s not good that we have to go back up to Inverness but we’re already done well twice up there so there’s no reason to think that we can’t go back up there and take the three points.

“We’re quite happy with it all and we’ll give everything we’ve got.

“We have five games left and we’re six points ahead of the bottom team. It’s in our hands and we don’t need anybody else to do us any favours.

“But if we lose the five games we deserve to go down, really.”

Neil said Hamilton were bitterly disappointed with Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Inverness, believing they should have won.

He said: “Saturday’s result was a bit of a damper for us, especially since we were 1-0 up with five minutes to go. We should have been able to see it through.

“I felt that we had done enough in the first half and it was a fluke goal for them to take a point so that was difficult to take.

“Apart from a couple of chances from Dougie Imrie and Filip Morais, they hadn’t really offered anything until they scored.

“However, it’s another point on the board for us and we need to make sure our heads are up and that we beat Kilmarnock.”

Hamilton also ended a six-game scoring drought with a well-worked goal as Neil played a crafty free-kick to the unmarked James Gibson to rifle in a 17th-minute opener.

The skipper said: “We had worked on it on the training ground and it was just good to see it working in a game.

“We had been struggling to score in our last few games so it was important to get a goal and it was a good one when it came, so we were delighted.

“But when we score we really need to make it count.”