Livingston hope luck deals them a better Hand

ANDREW SMITH

SHORTLY after his arrival at Livingston in the second week of January, on-loan Watford midfielder Jamie Hand was the subject of a question and answer session in the club’s programme. Asked to name his favourite record, the 21-year-old offered the wonderfully-gnomic response: "I don’t know who sings it, although I do have one."

Six weeks on, enquiring as to his favourite game in Livingston colours would probably leave Hand similarly clutching at straws. He would be unable to tell you who it came against, probably, but he would be sure that there just had to be a suitable candidate.

Were he to restrict his selection to a game he had started in Scotland from which Livingston actually emerged victorious, the Uxbridge-born performer could narrow his search. All the way down to an eked-out 1-0 victory at Alloa in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup three weeks ago.

The West Lothian side’s prize for that triumph is today’s quarter-final tie against Hearts at Tynecastle. Even then, however, that successful afternoon in Alloa he has no cause to remember with any degree of satisfaction.

"We struggled a bit [that day] but the cup isn’t about performances," he says. "I’d take another three rubbish wins in the tournament and five rubbish wins in the league to get us out of our present position."

Hand makes all the right noises about the Scottish Cup providing that Livingston, who have taken a solitary point from their past ten league games, with a starting point to do more than abjectly surrender their top-flight status.

He does so because many of his past cup experiences have proved memorable. Gianluca Vialli handed the player his senior debut for Watford as a final minutes substitute in an FA Cup tie lost 4-2 to Arsenal in January 2002. The following year he featured in the Hornets’ run to the FA Cup semi-final; Hand was given a 35-minute run-out in the 2-0 quarter-final success over Burnley. He did not make the bench, however, for the subsequent 2-1 reverse against Southampton in the last four meeting of that year’s competition.

"The Hearts game is massive; it is the one that could turn our season," he petitions, somewhat optimistically. "The lads know that if we get a result on Sunday that a semi-final would be a fantastic boost. I know what it can do for a club because I was at Watford when we reached the semi-final. Those kind of days fly past you but everything improves because of the confidence and that could help us climb the table.

"I don’t go along with the idea that it could be a distraction. It is a nice diversion for us because things aren’t sitting too pretty for us in the league."

His Livingston sojourn has proved a welcome distraction for Hand. This despite unremittingly bleak form and the internecine strife, the latter threatening to become a battle of wills between Pearse Flynn, soon-to-be- owner of the administration-racked club, and novice manager Richard Gough, whose supposed defeatism has put his position under threat after only three months in the job.

This is of little concern to Hand. He came north, to a land where he lived from the age of five to eight, in search of regular first-team football after this proved hard to come by at Watford - a development that led to him beginning this campaign with a two-month loan spell at Oxford United.

Working under Gough and his assistant Archie Knox proved an attraction for a tenacious performer whose Scottish father Michael genned him up on the pair’s pedigree. Hand maintains that Gough has conducted himself impeccably in an, almost, impossible first management posting. "He hasn’t let anything that has happened affect him and he’s been different class," says the midfielder, who, predictably, would welcome a Scotland call-up even although he was a regular in the England set-up from 15s to 20s age levels.

"He’s pulled meetings straight away to let us know what is going on. He has been magnificent from the start and said that he won’t be walking away from anything. We think a lot of him and want to pull together. He told us that he was here until told otherwise. To be fair, the type of man that he is, he didn’t need to say that. But it was good that he got us together for that."

Hand would consider throwing his hand in permanently with Livingston, though the year he has remaining on his Watford contract could preclude that.

For the moment he is regularly welcoming visitors to a flat round the corner from the Almondvale stadium. God help those guests, however, if they ask Hand to stick on some music he likes.

Taken from the Scotsman