Outbreak of yellow fever

WILLIAM HUNTER

26 Aug 1991

HEARTS kept up their winning ways when they scraped a victory over St Johnstone by the only goal at McDiarmid Park.

Statistically, the score is a pale little figure.

It has to be compared and contrasted with the pollen count.

An outbreak of yellow cards reached the jaundiced total of 10.

If memory serves, St Johstone received six of them.

During a bright and battling game they were otherwise also a might unlucky.

Two chances missed near the end by Curran and Ward could have altered the complexion of the encounter.

Yet there was always the feeling that amounted to a conviction that Hearts would not be hit.

Henry Smith in their goal was in awesome form.

He did nothing much but everything precisely.

Any ball between knee height and the roof of the stadium looked likely to be his.

Because of Smith's contribution and a joyous performance by Tosh McKinlay, who patrolled Allan Moore out of the game, Hearts were due their win for individual merit.

If about that verdict there is some kind of moral certainty, it is tough to read what depth of significance may lurk in the cautionary tale of the refereeing.

Mr Roy seemed to be in a different movie from everybody else at the match.

Ten yellows in the circumstances were bananas.

Some kind of rash of strange behaviour has always followed any change in the rules.

Everybody (surely?) will bed down to the new law in time.

To be going on with it ain't half funny how widespread are its effects.

Saturday's disease of carding included for carrying on no more robustly than do impatient elderly shoppers with their trolleys in supermarkets.

Talking out of turn, faking, pushing, and an aimless use of hands were included in the riot of rebukes.

Mr Roy's rectitude would have been easier to take if it had been consistent.

When a couple of collisions ended with Crabbe of Hearts hurt on the deck, the referee suddenly chose not to have an all-seeing eye.

Otherwise, it would have been offski again for St Johnstone's John Inglis, and it would have taken an angelically brave official to have the courage for that.

Some players took the new look of stern administration at its po-faced value, conspicuously McPherson of Hearts, who rolled about mortally after an ordinary dunt.

If Dave McPherson were a horse, a merciful veterinary would have shot him.

Craig Levein had the goal from a header by newcomer Graeme Hogg.

It had the look of a set piece from a corner.

If so, Hogg is not only a sturdy extra prop to the ambition of Hearts but a quick learner.

Taken from the Herald