Lee Clark goes through the mill before Kilmarnock emerge with a win

Clark was serving a ban after being sent off in the Premiership opening day defeat against Motherwell at Rugby Park last week and had to use walkie-talkie to communicate with his technical area.

Published 14th Aug 2016

Boss Lee Clark endured an afternoon of "torture'' in the SuperSeal stadium watching Kilmarnock come from behind to beat Hamilton 2-1.

Clark was serving a ban after being sent off in the Premiership opening day defeat against Motherwell at Rugby Park last week and had to use walkie-talkie to communicate with his technical area.

The Englishman watched Accies midfielder Louis Longridge open the scoring in the 26th minute with a drive and the home side were in control until the 70th minute when striker Kris Boyd levelled with a header for his 100th goal for Killie before substitute Souleymane Coulibaly fired the winner in three minutes later.

"It is different,'' said Clark. "A lot of the time you are on pitch level and you cannot see everything that is happening.

"When you are up in the stands you see the whole picture.

"I try to go up but I never seem to last longer than 10 or 15 minutes so today was torture because I obviously knew I couldn't come down at any time, not even for half-time.

"So the lads have done great and we have got the result but we have got a lot of more hard work in front of us.

"It was not a classic by any stretch of the imagination.

"It was a massive three points but no way do we think that is the be-all and end-all, that we are the finished article because there are a lot of things for us to work on.''

Hamilton player/manager Martin Canning insisted his side were the better team but pointed mainly to poor finishing and lax defending for a second successive defeat after taking the lead.

Accies were knocked out of the Betfred Cup by Championship side Morton in midweek after going ahead and Canning was again left frustrated.

"It was a strange one,'' he said. "We have played in a game where I believe we were the better team.

"I believe we created enough opportunities to win the game.

"We have not been clinical enough at both ends, to stop the ball going into our goal and putting the ball in the net at the other end.

"If we had done that and gone 2-0, I could have seen us going on to win the game pretty comfortably.

"I didn't see where Kilmarnock's goals were going to come from.

"Something I don't like is the fact we have conceded two quick-fire goals.

"When you concede one you need to make sure you regroup and don't concede the second one and feel your way back into the game.

"And I also felt that in the second half it was a second yellow card for the boy (Will) Boyle after Greg Docherty has gone round him.

"And down to 10 men with the opportunities we were creating, I would have fancied us to go on and win the game."