Stuart Kettlewell was left frustrated that Ross County did not capitalise on their early dominance against Hamilton Academical to claim all three points.

The Staggies looked in complete control for the opening half hour of the match in Dingwall, and were finally rewarded with a goal through Dylan Smith.

However, the momentum quickly shifted, and Hamilton found an equaliser before half time courtesy of Stuart McKinstry.

As far as Kettlewell was concerned, that was a self-inflicted blow, with the Staggies making uncharacteristic mistakes to allow their opponents back into the contest.

"It's frustrating when you look at the amount of opportunities we had, and the amount of time we got into their box,” Kettlewell said.

"Their goalkeeper made a few saves, and I thought we were so dominant in that 30 minutes especially.

"After that, one error borrowed another. There were a couple of mistakes when we should be playing into different areas, and the opposition got a lift from that.

"It was a really poor goal to concede from our perspective, but we knew Hamilton would come at us. I just thought that standing toe-to-toe, we were by far the better team.

"I don't suppose many teams care about the stats, it's just about having that extra bit of quality that we lacked in the first half.

"Richard Chin was electric in going past his full back, but he didn't quite have the end product we've seen from him.

"We had a number of shots from the edge of the box, and I've been used to us capitalising on that, but tonight for whatever reason that wasn't the case.

"This season when we catch fire, we tend to take the game away from teams, but one or two errors that we made led to Hamilton having a bit of incentive in the game.

"We gathered ourselves again, but I would like to see us squeeze that dominance and make sure we capitalise on what was complete control."

One blow in the first half for County was an injury to Lewis Strapp, who went off with a dislocated shoulder.

He was replaced by Josh Reid, who immediately played a key role in County’s goal, but it was still a setback to lose one of the Staggies’ star performers so far this season.

“It's back in place now, so we need to see what that looks like,” Kettlewell added.

"He indicated it straight away, and we know that if Lewis could continue, he would.

"Josh came on and did really well, and we have two good players in that position, so it was easy enough to make that change.

"I thought Josh did great for our goal, with the position he took up and his turn to fire it across the box.

"I thought he slotted into the position with no issues at all, and it certainly wasn't that change that didn't win us the game – I didn't think it had a huge impact.

"It was just that we didn't have that extra spark, that magic, that we've seen time and time again this season.”