Friends will become foes for 90 minutes on Wednesday night when Brian Rice’s Hamilton Accies face off against John Hughes’ Ross County in the Highlands.
The two managers have been the greatest of pals for decades, but they will become great rivals at the Global Energy Stadium in a contest that could have devastating consequences for Accies or pull the Staggies right back into the automatic relegation fight.
Hamilton sit bottom of the table – two points behind 11th place Kilmarnock and three points adrift of County in 10th – but they know a win in Dingwall will take their survival bid down to the final day.
And there’s even a scenario that could see all three sides locked on 33 points going into next Sunday’s last round of fixtures, if Killie draw with St Mirren and Accies land a win.
It’s set to be a fascinating encounter when Rice and Hughes go head-to-head, but the Accies boss will put their friendship to one side to try and steer Hamilton to survival.
Rice, who was assistant to Hughes at Hibs, Inverness and Falkirk said: “Me and Yogi are massive friends, always have been and always will be.
“But at the end of the day, I’ve got to do the best for my club and he’ll do the best for his club.
"We don’t look any further than Wednesday night and what will be will be.
“As long as we go and have a go, try and get the three points that’s all I can ask of the players. You never know what’s going to happen, we could be 10th by the end of the night, we could be 11th or we could be 12th – we just don’t know.
“Yogi and I have had a bit of banter about it [the situation] and we phone each other quite a lot, but I’d never go into his team and he’d never talk about mine.
“We’ll always talk about football in general, but we’ll focus on doing the best for our clubs on Wednesday.
“It’s still feasible we can stay up and it would be an absolutely massive achievement because so much has happened this season – and I think some people forget a lot of the stuff that happened early on [referring to players missing due to Covid and self-isolation].
“But it’s in the past and it’s fantastic that the boys are still in there fighting, giving it everything and that has given us this chance on Wednesday.”
Accies kept their hopes alive with a 2-1 win at St Mirren on Saturday.
Rice was in the stand for the clash after being handed a four-game ban – two of which are suspended – for comments made about referees in their Scottish Cup exit to the Buddies last month.
He won’t be on the touchline in Dingwall and neither will Hughes, who, ironically, received an identical ban yesterday for comments on officials.
However, Rice doesn’t see being in the stand as a disadvantage with games played behind closed doors.
He added: “When you are in the stand at the moment, there’s no noise so the players can still hear you.
“I got a better view of the match at St Mirren than normal.
"A lot of managers like to watch the first half in the stand to give them a view of the game, so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.”
Follow Lanarkshire Live Sport on Twitter via @LanLiveSport, like us on Facebook or find us on Instagram for the latest sports news, pictures and video
