Inverness Caley Thistle’s first half performance in defeat to Hamilton Accies was ‘poorest of the year’, admits head coach Scott Kellacher
Scott Kellacher says it was frustrating watching his Inverness Caledonian Thistle side put in their poorest half of the season as they fell to defeat away at Hamilton Academical.
In a battle of the top two in League One going into the weekend, it was the Accies who came out on top, replacing Caley Thistle at the top of the division.
It marked the end of an eight-match winning streak across all competitions, and Kellacher admitted it was one of his side’s worst displays of the season.
“It’s a real sore one to take,” he told the club’s media afterwards.
“I don’t think we started the game well at all, and the first half was probably the poorest we’ve been all year.
“Too many never got going, and we didn’t get our foot on the ball and start passing it around. The conditions didn’t help, but it was the same for both teams, so we have no excuses at all.
“We are better than that, and the boys know it. I thought we were a far better side in the second half, and we got ourselves back in the game at 1-1, but then we go and lose a goal a minute afterwards which kills us.
“It was a frustrating day, but we’ll learn from the first half. We set standards at the club, and the boys know they need to be far better than that.
“We weren’t at our best and that’s really frustrating because we need to make sure we’re up there at the end of the season and today we fell short of what we’ve been producing lately.”
“The boys have been excellent up to this point. They have given us everything they’ve got, so we can put it down to an off day, and that happens.”
One of the particularly frustrating aspects of the performance was that just when ICT got back into the contest through Alfie Bavidge’s equaliser, Hamilton regained their lead a minute later courtesy of Kyle MacDonald.
In tricky conditions in the aftermath of Storm Amy, Kellacher was disappointed that more caution was not given to potential mistakes that could have been made.
However, he hailed the support of Caley Thistle’s travelling fans, who made the trip down to Broadwood Stadium.
“I really want to thank the fans that travelled down in tough conditions,” Kellacher added.
“I thought they were brilliant. They came down in their numbers and got right behind the boys, so I want to thank them for that and apologise for not sending them back up the road with three points.”