Charlie Christie: Hamilton Academical teach a lesson in promoting academy players.
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Erling Haaland’s four goal haul against Wolves, Celtic’s dominant performance against Hearts, Ipswich Town’s return to the top flight after 22 years and Crystal Palace’s humbling of a sorry Manchester United all gained headline news last week and rightly so.
However, the football headline that grabbed my attention more than any other this past seven days was the one from Hamilton Accies Scottish League One match against Kelty Hearts which saw them finish the game with11 players on the pitch who had all come through their academy – a quite incredible achievement and one which they should be rightly proud of.
Current Accies manager John Rankine was a former player of mine when I signed him from Ross County in 2006 and, knowing John, it is no surprise to me that he has the mindset and desire to play home grown players.
John was a consummate professional who led by example on the training ground, and he was always ready to give his help to the younger players at Inverness even although he was only 24 years of age at the time.
Hamilton have been renowned in recent times for their promotion of academy players, and it was the development and subsequent sales of midfielders James McCarthy and James McArthur around 2009/2010 that made the club realise they could produce their own and they have done so successfully ever since.
McCarthy and McArthur both went on to have terrific careers in the game playing in the topflight of English football and gaining numerous international caps for the Republic of Ireland and Scotland respectively.
I do wonder where they would have been had it not been for the brave decisions that Hamilton made in introducing them into the first team at sixteen and eighteen years of age?
Whilst we struggled to impose ourselves on Montrose on Tuesday night at Links Park stadium the one pleasing aspect from a disappointing display was the fact that we didn’t concede, and we go into tomorrow’s second leg with a great opportunity to get the job done.
Montrose showed they have players who can cause ICT problems and our mindset needs to be 100% right as we look to cement our place in the play-off final against either Alloa or Hamilton.
There is little doubt in my mind that the artificial pitch on Tuesday would have benefitted the home side and we need to prove my point as we get back on the grass at the stadium on Saturday afternoon.
I’m hoping that our full-time status will also be a telling factor and I would expect us to get stronger as the match progresses.
What we must avoid is giving Montrose any early foothold in the match as this will only strengthen their belief that they can cause an unthinkable upset.
A trip to Alloa or Hamilton awaits next Wednesday evening, and it would be nice to get the business done early on Saturday and keep as much in the players legs as possible given that every little edge at this stage of the season could prove telling.
