Hamilton Academical make the long journey north to Balmoor Stadium on Saturday as they face Peterhead in William Hill League One, with kick-off scheduled for 3pm.
It has been a tumultuous period for the Lanarkshire outfit, but with new ownership now in place, Accies will be eager to build momentum and move away from the lower reaches of the table. Currently sitting eighth following a points deduction, Darian Mackinnon’s side have experienced mixed fortunes in recent weeks and will be keen to find some consistency as the season progresses.
The Blue Toon, meanwhile, return to action after last weekend’s postponed fixture against Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Back on home turf, Peterhead will be determined to respond positively and get back to winning ways in front of their own supporters.
With both sides looking to turn the corner in their respective campaigns, an intriguing contest is in store at Balmoor.
From Jordon Brown: “It’s been a strange couple of weeks, especially whilst left mulling over an extremely disappointing last result against Cove which was by far and away our worst performance of the season. This hasn’t sat well with us but again in the overall perspective of the first half of the season, we are satisfied with where we currently sit. It is clear we have loads to improve on but on the whole the squad has adapted well to life back in league One and for many of the younger guys it’s the first time consistently playing at this level which we know is very challenging. I think that’s what we seen the most against Cove, the inconsistencies that we have been working hard to find solutions on, particularly with the amount of key experienced players missing and the levels shown in the week previous away at East Fife.
But what the last couple of weeks has given us is time to reset, reflect and be sure we are as ready as possible to go again and hit the ground running for the 2nd half of the season, we want to be looking up the way and giving ourselves a chance of staying in touch with the play offs. We hadn’t had a free weekend all season so we are hopeful it has allowed everyone that period to recover and go again. Training of course has been disrupted but we got a good session all together last week and then managed to train locally this week to ensure we are ready to go tomorrow.
In regards to Hamilton, it is difficult to predict exactly what to expect however it is clear that they are in a much more positive place as a club in comparison to this time last week. We had a brilliant performance against them at Balmoor earlier in the season which we were gutted not to win but were then dealt some harsh lessons on the quality of player they have in the away game where we didn’t do near enough. That will be on the minds tomorrow and we have prepared thoroughly as we always do on what we can expect tomorrow.
We know there are huge efforts going on off the pitch to get this game on and we know our standards must be raised again by 100% in comparison to our last game, and start to build into a new run at home and in the league, which again it was nice to see an overall 2025 calendar year improvements table with Peterhead near the top of that. The fans will be just as important tomorrow as we look to start 2026 on a high.
The squad is hungry to get back out there and we should have a couple more options than we did a week or so ago. Andy McCarthy obviously comes back from suspension and his importance was highlighted in his absence against Cove. Cammy is close and we will make a late call on that. Adam started to train last week and has now had a scan to provide clarity on his knee injury which brought pretty positive news so we will hopefully now see him built up to availability as he will be a top player for us as we seen earlier in season. Cieran Dunne will now start to up his rehab and we can’t wait to see him back on the pitch.
The work behind the scenes in terms of incomings and renewals is a daily process at the moment, and we hope to have some positive news for everyone associated with the club in the near future”.
