You’ve probably already noticed that the annual, glass-clinking shin-dig that is the PFA Scotland awards do was held last night.

Nicely pressed shirts, neatly coiffured hair, teeth gleaming like the Bee Gees after a scale and polish? And that was just the fitba writers at the pre-dinner drinks reception. Amid the dishing out of gongs, plaudits and prizes there was one name not featuring on the short list.

“The manager deserves to be looked at for awards,” suggested Kenny van der Weg of his Hamilton manager, Martin Canning. “The club does not have a lot of money, yet we stay up every season.

“If you saw how we played here, we did well and maybe they need to look at clubs like us and managers like him sometimes.”

Canning continues the admirable work at a club which has not had its troubles to seek both on and off the pitch this season. The rewards for those backs-to-the-wall endeavours came in the shape of three valuable points on Saturday after a run of six successive defeats.

This battling victory over bottom-of-the-table Ross County inched them towards Premiership safety as they took another significant stride to ensuring top flight football will be played in these parts next season for a fifth successive year.

With both sides scrapping desperately for every point, this encounter was never really going to be an exercise in the cultured, considered intricacies of the beautiful game.

At times, this thumping, clattering affair was so agricultural you half expected the neat and tidy David Templeton to get fouled by a horse drawn plough.

Templeton, who scored Hamilton’s decisive second goal, was a light of invention amid the grim, determined industry. He was the stand out player on the pitch but the 29-year-old was also quick to praise those around him, like van der Weg, who performed the more gritty toil and chores that are necessary in these huffing, puffing skirmishes at the wrong end of the league.

“David is so good on the ball and we try to find him all of the time,” said the Dutchman. “We did that, but we all work and, if you don’t, you don’t stay in the Premiership.”

That sense of comradeship and dedication to the cause was typified by Georgios Sarris who picked up a sore one in the last knockings but returned to the pitch to hobble around up front just to make sure Hamilton still had 11 men on the park to see out the game.

“Georgios sums up what we do, we never give up,” added van der Weg, who relished this precious win over the club he left just a few months ago.

“We couldn’t make another sub, but he fought until the end, even though he could no longer walk. That’s what we need to get through the season.

“It was an extra special win for me. I lived there (Dingwall) until three months ago. When you play against your old team-mates and fans you want to win even more and we did it well.

“We always fight until the last moment. The season is 38 matches and it doesn’t matter if you lose some, we win the important ones.”

As Hamilton edge towards Premiership security, the trapdoor continues to creak ominously below the feet of Ross County.

The feeling of disappointment had an added sense of injustice as the visitors felt Hamilton should have been reduced to 10-men in the opening seconds when Darian MacKinnon took a wild swipe at Jamie Lindsay. MacKinnon was lucky. So too was Lindsay for that matter.

“I don’t care of it’s in the first minute or in 85 minutes, that’s a red card for me,” said Marcus Fraser, the County defender.

Fraser was also brassed off by the decision to give a penalty against him early in the second half which handed Hamilton a vital advantage. “It turned the game,” he said. “They are season-changing moments. Hamilton’s tails were up and things were starting to go for them.”

Now two points adrift of the relegation play-off place, Ross County travel to second-bottom Partick Thistle this week for a must-win encounter that will add a few more proverbials to the proverbial six-pointer.

“We don’t down tools yet,” said Fraser. “I’ve been here for three years and I’ve played in cup semis and finals. But this will be right up there in terms of big games, if not the biggest for me. That’s what all the players and staff need their minds on and I’m sure it will be.”