Airdrie celebrating at our stadium hurt - that must motivate Accies, says ace

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Hamilton Accies midfielder Lewis Smith admits it hurt to see and hear Airdrie celebrating promotion on their home turf, and says they must use it as motivation to bounce back.Their penalty shootout defeat on Saturday in the play-off final put Airdrie in to next season’s Championship and dropped Accies into League One, and Smith says it was a horrible feeling.“It really hurt, especially at our stadium, and them having a good time and stuff like that hurt a lot,” he said.“But there’s nothing we could do about it, to be honest.

All the Airdrie players were all right with us, but it wasn’t something we wanted to see.“We need to use that to spur us on next season.

You’ve got to use all these things as motivation, because otherwise it’s just going to linger on your mind, for bad reasons.“You need to use bad stuff to motivate you, and hopefully next season we can have scenes like those, rather than other teams.”Smith says conceding late on has been an Achilles heel for Accies all season, but admits they shouldn’t have taken it to a play-off with their Championship status on the line.He said: “We thought we played pretty well, in terms of the individual game.“We were unfortunate to concede that goal in the last minute and penalties are a lottery – but we shouldn’t have had to rely on that last game to save our season.“Conceding late goals has come back to haunt us a few times and it sums up our season.“That has cost us all season and it cost us again on Saturday.”Follow Lanarkshire Live Sport onTwitter via@LanLiveSport, like us onFacebookor find us onInstagramfor the latest sports news, pictures and video.