Skill and entertainment in short supply

Paul Sinclair

21 Apr 1997

Hearts.......................1 Dunfermline............1

David Bingham dispossessed David Weir three minutes before half-time to create the first of a number of chances from which he should have scored to put Dunfermline too far ahead of dithering Hearts.

Instead Bingham missed, as he did repeatedly, and Hearts scored with the last move of the match.

TURNING POINT IT IS not just statistics which can distort reality, facts can too.

On Saturday at Tynecastle, for example, far from a meaningless fixture it was between a team in Hearts, who are chasing a place in Europe, while Dunfermline could secure their future in the premier division and finish in the highest position in their history.

Dunfermline took the lead through a young player making his full debut, while Hearts grabbed a last-minute equaliser from a veteran equalling his club's record.

All that and eight bookings and a sending off.

The facts suggest excitement, a hint of controversy, perhaps even entertainment.

The reality? This was dreich stuff, a festival of missed passes.

It is remarkable that premier managers claim that pressure is what can take the entertainment out of matches, but who then blame dull performances on the fact a fixture is ''meaningless''.

Surely when the pressure is eased teams can show us the full array of their creative talents.

Perhaps the sad truth of Saturday is that they did.

Hearts manager Jim Jefferies explained that conditions on a sunny spring afternoon had not been conducive to good play.

''Some players said that when they were in the final third of the pitch and looking to make a quality cross, the state of the ground was such that they always felt they had to take another touch rather than play the ball first time,'' he said.

What hope for coaches like Jefferies? The fear is that we cannot play on grass.

Now it seems we cannot even grow it.

For Dunfermline this was a match in which they dropped two points rather than gaining a draw.

From the moment their debutant Scott Young made an astute run to meet Alan Moore's cross to put them in the lead after 27 minutes, they looked in command against a Hearts team which were as predictable in attack as they were muddled in defence.

The 20-year-old Young's first full match could have been the sort of thing that dreams are made of, until referee Bobby Tait intervened.

He booked Young for his part in a wrestle with Kevin Thomas and that means he is suspended for the next match.

Had some of his older colleagues shown the calmness in front of goal which he did, Young would also have received his first win bonus.

Dunfermline caught Hearts on the break several times in the second half, but, Dave Bingham particularly, scorned any chances that came their way.

Instead they scrambled their way through the last minutes, trying to cling on to a lead, when they should have had the match finished.

They were not helped by the sending-off of Gerry Britton for two bookable offences within 60 seconds, two minutes from the end, and the scene was set for an undistinguished Hearts performance to be marked with the equalling of Jimmy Wardhaugh's record of 206 goals for the club.

John Robertson has been sitting on a total of 205 since January, but he got the last touch on a Thomas header two minutes into injury time and afterwards talked of how much it meant to him to equal such a record at Tynecastle, and of his hopes of beating it.

The equalling of the record, he said, would help him because his contract is up at the end of the season, and Hearts' push for Europe was especially important ''with the stock market flotation of the club coming up.'' Not the sort of subject Wardhaugh would have discussed.

But in his day football was in the entertainment business.

Next League games: Hearts - Dundee United (a).

Dunfermline - Kilmarnock (h).

Taken from the Herald