Robertson and Calderwood bemoan red card

ALAN PATTULLO

JOHN Robertson’s league debut in charge of Hearts was otherwise memorable for one reason only - it provided the win which returns the Edinburgh side to third place in the Premierleague.

An appalling game between the supposed best two sides in Scotland outwith the Old Firm hinged on a controversial passage of play just prior to the hour mark when referee Stuart Dougal awarded a corner to Hearts after Russell Anderson’s clearance appeared to strike the Hearts striker Ramon Pereira last.

While this might otherwise have been an innocuous decision, it was to Dougal’s misfortune - and also Aberdeen’s - that Hearts contrived to construct something meaningful from this attack. Robbie Neilson’s subsequent header looked to have already passed beyond the goal-line when it was batted clear by Kevin McNaughton’s hand. Cue red card for the player, and cue bedlam.

Paul Hartley converted the penalty which not even the Hearts manager felt was necessary. Robertson admitted he would rather have taken the goal and to have resumed with 11 men against 11.

"The ball was already over the line," he said. "The Aberdeen lad did not need to be red-carded. The players all say the ball was a yard over the line already."

While this may have been so there was still no justification for Pereira’s outlandish reaction. He hared across to the touchline to remonstrate with the linesman and was booked for his efforts, then moments later replaced by an unimpressed Robertson. He was even involved in a spat with his own team-mate Alan Maybury, who clearly felt Pereira had over-stepped the mark.

"Ramon is an emotional character," Robertson later said. "He was more concerned with the ball having been over the line. It seemed to me, especially with Aberdeen having gone down to ten men, that it was important we removed him and kept the team calm."

Not so Zen-like was the Aberdeen manager Jimmy Calderwood, who greeted Dougal at the end with a message that was presumably far from welcoming.

"Kevin says the ball was already in the back of the net when he handled it," Calderwood said. "I don’t know the rules about that, and whether the player should still be sent off or not. But that’s not the problem. More of the problem is why the corner was given in the first place."

But Calderwood was not completely dejected: "It says how far we have come when you see how Hearts were celebrating at the end. It shows where we have come from. In saying that, we didn’t do ourselves credit today."

Both managers agreed it was a game that did not reflect well on the nearest Old Firm challengers. "We are trying to get people into the stadium," Calderwood said. "That would have driven them away. There was spoiling, niggling tackles, pulling jerseys. There was no flow to the game at all. The ball was black and blue."

Taken from the Scotsman