Oli Shaw says Hamilton Accies are becoming hard to beat, and can take massive confidence from their 1-0 win over Partick Thistle.
Lee Kilday’s 56th-minute header was enough to keep the three points in Hamilton and move Accies up to fifth in the table.
Accies created a number of chances against Thistle, with Shaw himself passing up one in the first half when he mugged Aaron Muirhead to bear down on keeper Myles Roberts.
While that one didn’t go Shaw’s way, the striker says there was a lot to like from the performance.
Former Hibs hit man Shaw, who has scored six times this season, said: “It’s a massive win.
“I thought we dominated the first half, and they’re obviously going to put balls into the box with the attacking threats they’ve got, but I thought the defenders and the goalie dealt with it really well.
“We had a couple of chances in the first half, we were unfortunate not to take them, but to get the goal in the second half, defend as a team and show that spirit that we’ve got, it’s a massive three points.
“Last week we know it wasn’t our best performance, but we put it right this weekend, put in a good team performance.
“The spirit in the boys, the togetherness, we stuck together right to the final whistle, and we’ll build on this now.
“We knew it was going to be a tough game but if we continue to play like that we know we’ll be difficult to play against.”
The midfield was a strong area for Accies, with Scott Martin and Jamie Barjonas, in particular, excelling.
Shaw said: “I thought Scotty and Barjo dominated the midfield, kept the ball ticking over, and I thought we had some good passages of play.
“With the forward players we’ve got we’re always going to cause teams problems.
“It’s a massive three points, so we look to build on that, now.
“Lee scored today, we need goals to be chipped in from everywhere, we can’t just rely on the forward players.
“We’ve got a threat at set-plays, it paid off, and thankfully that’s the winning goal.”
Shaw pounced on a dithering Murihead in 36 minutes to burst through on goal, but Roberts spread himself well to make a good save.
The striker says he’ll put it behind him, but reckons the keeper did well.
He said: “I caught it well. The goalie has gambled, got down well and made a good save.
“I thought I would hit it early and would see it nestling in the back of the net, but you’re not going to score every chance you get.
“I was just waiting on a second chance and it didn’t come. Strikers miss chances, I’ve scored a few this season, so I’ll put that one behind me and we’ll move on.
“Strikers have to got to get into positions to score goals, I’ve been doing that in recent weeks.
“I made that chance out of nothing, really, it was a punt up the park, I kind of got on the end of my own flick-on, so it was a chance out of nothing.
“Normally I like to put those away, unfortunately today wasn’t the day, but we move on to next week.”
Hamilton travel to Hampden on Saturday to take Queen’s Park, hoping to leap-frog them into fourth place.
Shaw said: “We take each game as it comes, we’ve got another big game next week, so we’ll focus on that now, and look at the table after that game.
“They will be a good side, it will be a tough game. They’ve been a good side in recent years, but we’ve come off a 3-3 draw when we probably didn’t deserve to get anything out of the game and come off a win against a team that was challenging for promotion last season.
“Confidence will be high in there, we’ll come in next week, recover well, re-evaluate and go again.”
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