Accies' McDonald maintains slim hopes of SPL survival

Apr 14 2011 by Andrew McGilvray, Hamilton Advertiser

GARY McDONALD insists he hasn’t given up hope of keeping Hamilton in the top flight and warned Hibs that they’re more than capable of taking three points from Sunday’s Easter Road showdown.

Sitting 12 points behind St Mirren at the foot of the SPL table with six games remaining, Hamilton are odds-on favourites for the drop, but McDonald says they’ll keep fighting to the end.

He said: “We’ll keep going.We’ve got six games to go, 18 points are available and we’re 12 behind St Mirren. It’s an uphill struggle but we’ve got a big game against Hibs on Sunday.

“We just need to get three points, that’s the important thing, then we can build on it.

“We played Hibs recently at home and I thought we did really well – but again we lost.

“We’re capable of beating Hibs on our day, we know that, but we need to go and actually do it.”

McDonald reckons the story of last Sunday’s 1-0 home defeat against Rangers is in the fact that Hamilton felt aggrieved not to take points off the title-chasing Ibrox side.

He said: “Of course we’re disappointed not to take something from the game, given the way we played.

“I thought we took the game to Rangers, and had a go at them.

“Little things don’t seem to be going for us, but that’s the way it has been all season – we’re just not capitalising on good performances and it’s a shame because we can be happy with what we did on Sunday.”

Despite Accies’ predicament McDonald enjoys competing against the top sides in Scotland but knows they need to start converting chances.

He said: “I enjoyed the game, I thought all the boys played really well and passed the ball about. Our position play was really good, and we’re all gutted not to have taken something from the game.

“We enjoy going up against top players, that’s what it’s all about.

“Rangers and Celtic are big clubs with great players, and on paper they should be better than us, but on any given day we’re capable of beating any team and I think we showed that.

“We could have had a great result on Sunday, but the emphasis is on ‘could have’.”