Ninety eight minutes? No, it wasn’t the time Csaba Laszlo took to berate his Dundee United troops after a grisly surrender to Morton.

The Dark Blue side of the City of Discovery were in a far more chipper mood after the kind of late show that should have been presented by David Letterman.

A-Jay Smith-Leitch may have been the ultimate hero for Dundee with his last-gasp winner in the eighth minute of stoppage time but the influence of Scott Allan, who was introduced in the second half as the visitors tried to overturn an early deficit, earned plenty of plaudits.

The fact he started on the bench at the SuperSeal Stadium may have raised a few eyebrows but the well-travelled 26-year-old would turn in an eye-catching display which galvanised Dundee’s assault.

The sending off of Hamilton’s David Templeton aided the cause, while the under-the-cosh Accies found themselves down to nine-men at the time of the late concession with Darian MacKinnon being treated behind the goal.

Allan, however, was a key weapon in the siege and Mark O’Hara, whose own goal gave the hosts an early lead, was one man left heaping lumps of acclaim on to his team-mate.

“He’s a massive player for us and we all know the quality he has,” said O’Hara. “He wants to be playing and he’s done more than enough to show why he should be playing.

“He’s very composed and is someone in the final third who wants to take his time and make a killer pass. At times we have maybe been lacking that this season. You can see his quality in training. There’s something about him. He’s got the killer instinct. Hopefully he gets a run in the team and continues to give us assists.”

O’Hara’s own assist wasn’t quite what he had in mind as his sliced attempt at a clearance spun into the net to give Hamilton the lead.

“I felt I let the team down a bit with that one so it was a relief to get the three points,” he said. “It goes down as ‘O’Hara own goal’ so everybody sees that and it’s disappointing.

“But A-Jay bailed me out with the winner. I’ve never had an own goal in my life. That was a first and hopefully the last. It’s not a great experience.”

Having restored parity through Matthew Henvey, Dundee ploughed on to claim a vital three points which hoisted them above Hamilton and into ninth place. It’s onward and upwards as far as O’Hara is concerned.

“With the subs we brought on it shows we have a really strong squad,” he noted. “We shouldn’t be where we are in the table. We can now look up and not down and push on.”

Hamilton’s woes in their own back yard continued. Despite losing the talents of Greg Docherty and Michael Devlin to pastures new, though, Dougie Imrie remains confident the club’s youth policy can churn out the replacements.

“That’s what happens here at Hamilton,” said Imrie. “We’ve got players who come through. James McCarthy and James McArthur left and now it’s Michael and Greg.

“But our youth policy is still thriving and you can see it with Lewis Ferguson and Shaun Want. We need to stick together just now.”