Hamilton match-winner Dougie Imrie earns plaudits

Hamilton boss Martin Canning praised goalscorer Dougie Imrie and claimed his winner against Ross County was an appropriate reward for his hard work.

Imrie's fourth goal of the season was enough to separate the sides in an often scrappy Ladbrokes Premiership encounter at the SuperSeal Stadium.

But Canning was delighted with his side's first three points of the season following earlier draws against Rangers and Dundee.

He said: ''It was a deserved win, probably the third week in a row that we've played well enough to win a game, but it's the first time we've managed to get the three points. For the boys the win was more important for their belief. They are working hard, they are doing things right and performing to a high level, and it's important that they start picking up points, so I'm delighted that they got them. It was great to see guys like Dougie Imrie getting their reward. He works so hard week in, week out, regardless of the outcome of the game, and he puts everything he has into it, so it's nice to see him getting the winning goal in games like that.''

Ross County manager Jim McIntyre offered no excuses following Imrie's 74th-minute winner.

''I'm not happy, we weren't at our best,'' he said. ''I thought our quality on the ball was poor, we struggled to get ourselves going. I can't fault the boys for their work-rate, they were certainly working hard enough, but their decision-making let them down at times. It was a scrappy game for both sides, the first goal was always going to be crucial. We hit the bar in the first half and had arguably our best move of the game prior to Hamilton's goal, where you've got to say the big fella Remi Matthews has made a great save from Michael Gardyne's header. Again, we made a poor decision, had a chance to pick a pass but deliberated on it, Hamilton robbed us and scored, so from our point of view we have to make better decisions than that - especially that late in the game, where both sides knew it had been scrappy, there wasn't a great deal of quality in it, and it looked as if one goal was going to be enough. So from that point of view, we only have ourselves to blame.''