HAMILTON Academical have mastered the sort of annual escapology act that even Houdini might have eventually tired of but Dougie Imrie believes it doesn’t always have to be that way.

The Lanarkshire side will secure top flight football for a sixth successive season if they can maintain their two-point lead over St Mirren over the last three games of the season.

For a club that struggles to draw a crowd – there were only 1100 there for Saturday’s 3-3 draw with Livingston – and works off one of the smallest budgets in the Ladbrokes Premiership that would count as a praiseworthy achievement.

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Imrie, though, has grown weary of the constant cycle of Hamilton surviving each year by the skin of their teeth. If they can make it through this season unscathed, the veteran forward hopes there might be scope for greater ambition.

“We have been here before,” he sighed. “For me, 10th or 11th shouldn’t be acceptable for us. We should be pushing higher than that, staying in the league on merit and not hanging on every season.

“If we do stay up this season, we have to aim to do that next year and push away from relegation and always being the favourites to go down.”

Hamilton will likely need to show greater mettle over the coming weeks just to get that opportunity. They fell apart spectacularly on Saturday as they frittered away a two-goal lead earned through George Oakley's strike and Imrie's penalty to find themselves trailing going into injury time after Scott Pittman's double was sandwiched by Steve Lawson's finish. Aaron McGowan’s deflected effort saved their bacon but Imrie knew it would need to be better.

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“We are soft all over the park and we can’t be like that,” he added. “It’s not good enough. It’s probably a mentality thing. We are comfortable at 2-0 but when we lose a goal and it’s like: “What do we do?” We can’t do that.

“For me it will go to the last game of the season against St Johnstone. This was an opportunity to stop that. If we had picked up three points, we would have been four in front of St Mirren going to Dundee. A win there and it was probably done. But not now. It will probably go right to the wire.”

That match at Dens Park could be season-defining for both clubs. “With the situation Dundee are in, and the bit of needle there has been between the clubs, they will be up for the game.”