ICT looking to banish Hamilton Hoodoo.

Inverness Caledonian Thistle make the long trek to New Douglas Park, Hamilton, to face their bogey side from their last SPL season.  Hamilton Academical dealt Inverness some harsh lessons two years ago winning eight points with the Caley Jags gaining only two.  These points lost proved crucial as Inverness were relegated at the end of the season.  Hamilton again showed that they have mastered our style of play by winning the first fixture this season at Tulloch Caledonian Stadium, Dougie Imrie thrashing the ball into the home net before most bums were on their seats.  Scoring goals is at a premium in these contests, neither side scoring more than one in any SPL match.  You would have to cast your mind back to season 2002/2003 when Inverness put a few past the Accies in a Scottish Cup meeting.  That was our last victory over Hamilton and it came in the Scottish Cup 4th round.  Hamilton had opened the scoring in the second minute in that match, but we cruised into the quarter-finals, banging home six goals into the bargain.

Alternative Maryhill looks ahead to this SPL clash.  He has a more in depth analysis of the game and it's surroundings. Heres hoping there's no need to take our shoes off during this game as Inverness look to extend the unbeaten away run for another week.

Hamilton Academical v Inverness Caledonian Thistle, 14th November 2010.

Two of Scottish football’s more distinctive names clash at New Douglas Park on Saturday. It is a little-mentioned fact that Hamilton Academical shared the honour (with Heart of Midlothian) of having the longest club name in Scottish football until Inverness Caledonian Thistle entered the league and claimed the title outright. For this presumption, Hamilton Accies have been punishing us ever since.

For reasons that will become apparent, the South Lanarkshire burgh of Hamilton is a place that is relatively unfamiliar to most Caley Thistle supporters: many probably perceive it as just another Buckfast-addled satellite of Glasgow. So, in the interest of improving understanding and empathy among Scottish football fans, here are a few more fascinating facts that you may or may not have known about Hamilton:

• Hamilton is home to the world’s largest known mausoleum outside the pyramids at Giza. It was built for celebrated Scottish pharaoh Alexander Douglas-Hamilton.

• Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton, was also responsible for much of the construction of Hamilton Palace, at one time Scotland’s largest and grandest stately home. It was demolished in 1921 after it began to sink into the ground as a result of the mine workings underneath it. This could be taken as a metaphor for the fate of several Scottish football clubs.

• In contrast to rugby, where every second club seems to have its roots in sweaty congress in a school pavilion, only one Scottish football club is known to have originated from a school team. The name of the club? Hamilton Academical.

• Many illustrious Scots can boast a Hamilton nativity. These include Jackie Bird, James MacPherson (Jardine from Taggart) and Barry Ferguson.

History of the Fixture

One of the most surprising aspects of this fixture is that despite both teams having spent the decade between 1994 and 2004 touring all three of the lower Scottish divisions, the clubs did not meet on league business until season 2008-09, when Hamilton joined Caley Thistle in the SPL. During the period that ICT were ascending through the third and second divisions, Hamilton were an established first division side, but in season 1998-99, when Caley Thistle achieved promotion to the first division for the first time, Accies were relegated to the second, and they followed that with relegation to the third the next season after being deducted 15 points for failing to fulfil a fixture against Stenhousemuir. By the time Hamilton had climbed their way back to the first division for the start of season 2004-05, Caley Thistle were beginning their first spell in the SPL.

So these two clubs were, until relatively recently, the proverbial ships that pass in the night. And on the basis of results between the teams since they finally became direct league rivals, Inverness supporters would be justified in wishing Hamilton’s ship had sunk to the bottom of the Clyde, as Caley Thistle have yet to record a league win against the Lanarkshire side in five meetings. Indeed, the only wins ICT have ever recorded against Accies came in a pre-season friendly in 1998, when Duncan Shearer and Scott Mclean scored in a 2-0 home win, and in round four of the Scottish Cup in 2003, when doubles from Dennis Wyness and Barry Robson and further goals from Paul Ritchie and Stuart McCaffrey secured a 6-1 win that set up Caley Thistle’s second historic Scottish Cup victory over Celtic.

Not much to celebrate then, but the five league games between the clubs have had their share of memorable moments. The first game of 2008-09, in Inverness, finished 1-0 to Accies, after a horrible error by Jamie Duff just before half time allowed Richard Offiong to run through on goal and score. The next fixture, in Hamilton, will go down in history as the game that brought the curtain down on Craig Brewster’s disastrous second spell in charge of ICT. The match itself was depressingly predictable: Caley Thistle’s players fought hard but lacked any composure, Accies calmly soaked up the pressure and gained the victory through a 39th-minute penalty from Simon Mensing after Grant Munro’s foul on Joel Thomas. The occasion, however, was something else. One of Caley Thistle’s biggest travelling supports in recent seasons marshalled itself defiantly in Chambers Bar, determined to see either dramatic improvement or managerial change, and after it became clear that the former wasn’t going to happen, the shoes came off in the stands and the shoogly peg supporting Craig Brewster’s thermal anorak finally plopped to the floor. One entertaining by-product of this was the Shoegate scandal which occupied the local press in the Highlands for the next few days; the more significant outcome was the appointment of Terry Butcher to the Inverness manager’s position. Even Terry and Mo were not able to break the Hamilton hoodoo, and two 1-1 draws only three weeks apart went a long way to sealing Caley Thistle’s relegation, but the silver lining was, of course, that the ICT that spent a season in the first division appear to have come back a much stronger team.

Stronger, that is, except where Hamilton are concerned. Caley Thistle went into the first game between the teams this season buoyant after a superb 4-0 victory against Dundee Utd, while Hamilton were reeling after successive 4-0 defeats to Aberdeen and Hearts. Invernessian optimism lasted exactly 38 seconds before former ICT player Dougie Imrie rifled a 25-yard drive past Ryan Esson. Thereafter Caley Thistle huffed and puffed to little effect, and the most noteworthy aspect of the afternoon was the disproportionate amount of abuse handed out to Imrie, a player who served ICT reasonably well but who was ultimately deemed surplus to requirements by Terry Butcher. Here’s hoping that on Saturday, Imrie is simply ignored by the supporters in the stand and overshadowed on the pitch by the quality Caley Thistle have to offer.

Current Form and Team News On paper, Caley Thistle should go into this game as firm favourites. Unbeaten away from home since November 28th of last year, with Tuesday’s disciplined win against Aberdeen the most recent game in that sequence, ICT have amassed 18 points from their first 12 SPL games and sit comfortably in fifth position, seven places and nine points ahead of bottom club Hamilton. Accies, moreover, have yet to win at home this season. Yet recent history tells us that form goes out the window where this fixture is concerned.

Caley Thistle’s great start to the season has been achieved in spite of some potentially debilitating injury problems, with young players like Nick Ross, Graeme Shinnie and most recently Gavin Morrison having risen to the challenge of SPL football impressively. For this game, ICT are still likely to be without Russell Duncan, Kenny Gillet, David Proctor, Chris Innes and Gil Blumenshtein. A defence of McCann, Tokely, Munro and Shinnie more or less picks itself, then, and Butcher is unlikely to rest any of the attacking trinity of Hayes, Foran and Rooney, even though none of them were at their best against Aberdeen. The manager’s biggest decision will be how his midfield lines up. Will he retain the personnel that ground out the victory against Aberdeen, will Gavin Morrison make way for recent injury rehabilitee Lee Cox, or might the manager opt for a more attacking line-up and restore Eric Odhiambo to the starting eleven?

Half a wasted evening of trawling through the official Accies website and various other online resources has yielded very little information about the current extent of Hamilton’s injury problems; indeed, every official match preview in the last month has announced brightly, ‘Billy Reid has no fresh injury problems to concern himself with’, which begs the question, how many points would Hamilton have if they did have more injury problems? Two likely factors in Hamilton’s poor form this season, though, are the absence of their captain Alex Neil, who has been out since pre-season with a damaged hip, and the transfer of James McArthur to Wigan during the summer. Aside from that, players who made a big impression last season, such as the Paixao twins and the aforementioned Dougie Imrie, have failed to find the same form this year, signings such as Gary McDonald and Damian Casalinuovo have yet to make any impact and veterans such as Mark McLaughlin and Simon Mensing are, according to supporters on various websites, struggling to maintain any solidity in the Accies defence. One player who has caught the eye of many is attacker Nigel Hasselbaink, who scored the winner recently in a surprise 1-0 away win against Motherwell, yet for all his skill, he has only two league goals this season, and having been substituted in only 23 minutes in Hamilton’s midweek defeat to Kilmarnock with an apparent hamstring injury, it is possible that he will miss the Caley Thistle game and that the Accies website will, at long last, have a fresh injury to report.

***Latest Team News***

Inverness have a new doubt over Shane Sutherland who has been suffering from tonsilitus.  The young striker made an impact coming on against Motherwell and almost brought about an equaliser, but he is struggling to make this one.  Duncan and Cox have been back in training this week, although it may be too early for either of them to start the game.  Butcher acknowledges the lack of victories over the Accies and is looking to rectify that.

Hamilton will be without captain Alex Neil and long term absentee James Gibson.  Nigel Hasselbaink looks set to join them on the sidelines with a hamstring injury.  The nineteen year old striker gave Inverness defenders a torrid time in the reverse fixture and will be sorely missed by Accies.  He may well be out for a couple of weeks.  This should allow Damien Casalinuovo an opportunity to establish himself in the starting eleven.  Billy Reid has targetted Jonny Hayes as the danger man and will be looking for his defence to contain him.

Prediction

For a fixture that would defy rhyme, reason, logic and the late-lamented psychic octopus, I can only follow my heart:

Hamilton 1 – Inverness Caledonian Thistle 2