St Mirren manager Jim Goodwin hailed his side as they picked up their first away Ladbrokes Premiership win of the season to climb off the foot of the table.
The Paisley outfit jumped up to ninth place following their 1-0 win at Hamilton, who had Alex Gogic sent off late on following Cammy MacPherson’s 52nd minute strike.
It was the midfielder’s first goal of the season and secured a deserved win for Goodwin’s charges, who hit the woodwork three times.
And Goodwin was delighted with the manner his side bounced back from their midweek defeat to Motherwell.
He said: “What a difference a win makes, eh? When it’s your first win on the road which has been a long time coming so it’s nice to put a stop to that bad run.
“Overall I’m delighted because coming into the game we were missing a lot of experienced players and a lot of physicality.
“Some boys were playing out of position and it was very much a makeshift back four.
“We could probably have made the afternoon a little bit more comfortable if the goalkeeper didn’t play out of his skin the way he did.
“You start to think ‘Is it going to be one of those days?’ but I’m delighted for the players because I asked big questions of them after Wednesday’s defeat to Motherwell, and the manner of it was sore for us all to take.
“But they answered a lot of questions today. Every single one of them was up for it.”
St Mirren players are heading over the Ireland for their Christmas night out after this win and Goodwin insists they earned that trip with this victory.
He said: “They’re away on their Christmas do and every one of them deserves a beer after that.”
Hamilton head coach Brian Rice admits their poor start to the second half cost them.
St Mirren’s Junior Morias hit the post in the first minute after the interval and MacPherson saw a free-kick tipped onto the crossbar by Accies goalkeeper Luke Southwood two minutes before he opened the scoring.
Rice said: “I thought the second half was a disappointing performance.
“Disappointing result, 100 per cent.
“I thought first half we were on top, had momentum but we never tested their goalkeeper. We got into wide areas, had crosses and plenty of set-plays but we didn’t test their goalkeeper enough.
“The second half the tone was set right from our kick-off. We had kick-off and St Mirren hit the post and that sent tone and we couldn’t get back in the game.
“The concerning part was we started to just kick the ball up the park in the second half.
“We stopped playing to our strengths, getting the ball into wide areas for Mickel Miller, who I thought was a threat in the first half and was causing them problems.
“We lost the goal and we seemed to lose a bit of confidence through that.
“We go down to 10 men again and it becomes very difficult.”
Rice had no complaints over Gogic’s dismissal for hauling down Cody Cooke when he was through on goal with 13 minutes remaining.
He said: “I thought it was a red card but I’ve not seen it again.”
