... and that was the holiday. Three days with Mickey, Donald and friends. Thrills, spills, loads of Johnny Foreigners and massively overpriced food. Ay, it was almost like a week in Scottish football. Minus the thrills and spills of course. In today's Mince 'n Tatties we wave our magic wand in the direction of one of South Lanarkshire's finest, hoping to spread a little happiness....
It's amazing what can happen in only three short days. Without internet access, and stuck in theme park where all contact with the outside world is severely limited, you're very much cut off from any kind of unpleasant worldly normality. And that's a good thing too, because the world is unpleasant and not very nice.
Spare a thought then for fans of Hamilton Academicals FC. Without a win since October last year (a Nigel Hasselbaink goal sealing a 1-0 win over Motherwell), they Accies ventured north to Aberdeen on Tuesday and were undone, again, by Chris Maguire's penalty just before the break. It was enough to earn the points for the Dons (who enjoyed back-to-back wins for only the third time this season), and condemn Accies to their 15th game without a win. Fifteen games, four goals and eight points adrift at the bottom, and Billie Reid is still in a job? Miracles never cease, that's for sure.
Accies' misery was made all the worse the following night when their closest rivals for that relegation spot won away at Motherwell. St Mirren (for it is them) increased the gap between them and the First Division to eight points, though Accies have a game in hand. Not that it'll make much difference in my opinion: five points from a possible forty-five is just not going to end well, is it?
Accies have enjoyed a decent spell in the top flight since coming up as First division champions in time for the 2008/09 season. A ninth place finish in their fist season was followed by a seventh placed finish the season after where, thanks to the lunacy of the league split, they actually had more points than Hearts, who finished sixth. But this season their luck appears to have run out. Without the goals that Mensing, Curier and Paixao provided last season, and having failed to replace important players like McCarthy, McArthur and Wesolowski, Accies are limping along behind the rest of the league. The league split is now only eight games away, at which point Billy Reid & Co must start getting points on the board to avoid coming to a sticky end.
In the meantime, the priority is to stop the rot as much as possible before the split. Accies have two games against the Old Firm to look forward to (although Accies last recorded a win against Celtic in 1989, they've not beaten Rangers since 1938) and with only wins against Motherwell and Caley this season (neither of whom will feature in Accies' poule come April), there's no denying the pressure is on.
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