Dundee defender Andy Boyle has hailed brave boss Neil McCann for standing by his football philosophy after the Dark Blues passed their way to their first win of the season.
McCann walked out at Hamilton’s Hope Stadium on Saturday staring at the very real threat he could lose his job if he could not arrest a run of seven straight defeats.
In those circumstances, it would have been easy for the former Rangers, Hearts and Scotland winger to give up on his ideals and instruct his side to take a no-risk approach to facing Accies.
But Boyle was impressed by his manager’s insistence that Dundee keep it on the deck as it paved the way to a deserved – if not belated – first three points of the season.
On-loan Preston centre-back Boyle put the Taysiders in front in a game for the first time this season when he nodded home seven minutes before half-time.
Accies should have struck back but saw Fredrik Brustad miss a three-yard sitter before substitutes James Keatings and Rakish Bingham both rattled the crossbar – and were punished as Karl Madianga clinched a 2-0 win in stoppage time.
Boyle told Press Association Sport: “It’s a big relieve – this result has obviously been a long time coming for us.
“But I thought we were good value for it after dominating the game. We rode our luck a bit late on but that is a bit of luck we probably deserve after the way things have gone recently.
“The manager has been brilliant. We’ve all taken a bit of flak but he’s been positive and kept on encouraging us to play.
“He’s been very brave. It would have been easy to revert to a safer style and go long but he has stuck to his guns and we reaped the benefits of it on Saturday.
“Have I seen any signs of him being under stress? No, not really. At training, everyone has been positive around the place. You wouldn’t guess from walking round the place that we had lost seven games on the spin from looking at folk.
“Saturday was a much better feeling coming off the pitch than we’ve had in past weeks. We just need to kick this on now.”
Defeat was a bitter blow for Accies as the failed to build on last week’s 3-0 triumph over St Mirren.
Dundee have now trimmed the gap on the second bottom Buddies to a point but Martin Canning’s men are only three ahead of the Dens Park side.
“It’s going to tighten up down the bottom,” said the Hamilton boss. “There is so little between the teams – there is nothing in it.
“Had we beaten Dundee we’d have got seventh but as it is we stay ninth. That’s just made it all the more compact down there.
“There will be weeks where we get results and win, others where we don’t. We just need to make sure we forget the bad ones and move on because we can’t afford to look backwards in this league. So we’ll be ready for Hibs next week.”