Martin Canning is hoping Hamilton get back on track after spending a team bonding day go-karting. Accies' player-manager took advantage of the international break to organise a day out with his players who go into today home game against Aberdeen looking for their first win in six Premiership games. Canning is hoping some time away from the weekly rigours of the top-flight will have been beneficial to his squad. Speaking yesterday, he said: "We trained the full week last week then had a day at the go-karts on the Friday and then went to the golf lounge after it and had a bit of fun. Wee Andy Ryan was the fastest at the go-karts, he qualified first and no one could pass him in the finals. It was a bit of down time and got away from football. So that was a good day, we had Saturday and Sunday off and trained all this week."
Aberdeen's 1-0 win over Hamilton when the sides met at Pittodrie in September extended the home side's winning run in the league to seven games from the start of the season and took them five points ahead of Celtic. However, after beating Hearts in their next game the visitors' form plummeted. Derek McInnes's side were knocked out of the Scottish League Cup by Hibs and then took one point from 15 before their 2-0 win over bottom side Dundee United in their last game. Canning believes momentum, forward or backward, is crucial in football.
He went on: "I have said it so many times, whether it is a good run or a bad run, momentum is such a huge thing. When it is with you, it is hard to explain why you are winning and when it against you, you can be playing as well and it is hard to say why you are not winning. At that point they had good momentum, they were winning week in, week out so that does help you get over the line in certain games and I think it helped them that night. I thought we were excellent that night and were very unfortunate not to take something from the game. On another night we may have. But come Sunday we will be focused, ready and go to try to get three points. We know it will be a hard game, you are obviously playing one of the top teams in the league. I am pretty sure they will come down here expecting to win and we will be focused on trying to win too."
Aberdeen midfielder Willo Flood is aiming for another winning run to get their season back on track. The Dons won their opening eight league games - equalling a winning run from last season - before taking one point from their next five. But they got back to winning ways against Dundee United immediately before the international break and Flood is determined to turn that sole victory into a run at Hamilton.
He said: "To be fair I don't think the lads were getting too carried away. We knew that the next result was only round the corner. We thought we were playing particularly well and it was only a matter of time and thankfully it came against Dundee United. We need to make sure we can go on a run now and hopefully we can kick on from here. Ever since I've been at the club, and I've been here two and a half years, we've always had different parts of the season where we have needed to go on a good run and thankfully we've come up trumps. So let's see if we can do it again this season. Everybody's ready to go. I think the international break maybe came at a bad time for us. We played really well against Dundee United and obviously we wanted to kick on from there. But the lads are feeling good now and feeling refreshed so hopefully we can get a good result on Sunday."