Dunfermline 1 - 1 Hearts

Alan Campbell at East End Park

It was inevitable. Hearts salvaged a point when referee Charlie Richmond awarded them a highly contentious second-half penalty. Dunfermline will not, though, be demanding an SFA inquiry.

The daftness of Hearts’ decision to make such a call on Friday could not have been more graphically underscored. This time it was Dunfermline’s Scott Wilson who appeared to innocently collide in the air with Lee Miller, causing him to hit the deck.

Eerily, Miller was also involved at Tynecastle on Wednesday night, when he was highly controversially judged to have fouled Rangers’ central defender Sotirios Kyrgiakos.

But it gets better. In the dying seconds Andy Tod had the ball in the Hearts net for what would have been the winner, but far side linesman Steven Craven raised his flag for offside. What goes around comes around.

Davie Hay, the Dunfermline manager, took both refereeing decisions against his side with commendable grace and not a little wit. “You either accept the decisions for what they are, as I will, or if you complain to people you might get the dec-isions in the next game,” he said wryly. “The referee makes the decisions, right or wrong.”

Wilson, though, was far from diplomatic. Quietly seething, he said: “It was never a penalty and I’m disappointed the referee made that decision. To make it worse, Lee Miller turned round to me and said it was never a penalty too.

“The boys feel gutted – we feel we’ve been cheated. We feel as if we’re suffering because of what happened on Wednesday. That’s two points we’ve lost, and we’re fighting a relegation battle.”

As happens in football, Miller, who had been interviewed earlier, claimed it was a definite penalty. “I went up for a header and he climbed all over my back,” said the striker. “I was just decked.”

This was infertile ground for the Hearts manager, John Robertson, to take a high moral stance. He refused to comment on his board’s decision to ask for an inquiry, but did say he thought yesterday’s award by Richmond was justified. Then added: “Who knows what is a penalty nowadays.”

All this overshadowed Dunfermline’s last game on this artificial surface, with a new rug due to be laid in the next fortnight.

Hearts have not won a league game at East End Park since the plastic was put down at the start of last season, and the dismal sequence continued despite their refereeing breaks.

Both sides were missing key players, but the visitors settled quickest and Dennis Wyness came within inches of getting his toe on the end of an inviting cross by Deividas Cesnauskis. Had he done so, Hearts would certainly have gone ahead.

Even in the early stages it was a feature of the surface that any player trying to dwell on the ball was dispossessed easily. Several Hearts players looked uncomfortable and Dunfermline seized on the unease to take a grip of the game. Christophe Berra was fortunate that Gorgi Hristov didn’t make more of his chance when he robbed the young defender and ran on into the box, but Andy Webster shepherded the striker away from Craig Gordon.

A minute later, the goalkeeper kept the score level when he turned a Simon Donnelly half-volley round the post for a corner.

All this was happening in front of the sizeable Hearts travelling support and they were further relieved on the half hour when their side survived a big Dunfermline claim for a penalty.

The home side believed the ball was handled by Berra when Iain Campbell shot, but Richmond, who was well placed, gestured that it was the defender’s chest.

Dunfermline, though, deservedly went ahead two minutes later. A third successive corner was swung over by left-back Campbell and Scott Wilson crashed a header off Gordon’s fingers into the net.

With the game heading for half time, one of these incidents that get referees a bad name came. Inevitably a Lithuanian was involved. Cesnauskis pushed the ball up the left touchline and ran after it; as he did he was blatantly clipped from behind by Hristov.

Unbelievably Richmond then proceeded to book Cesnauskis for rolling around while awarding the foul to Hearts and letting Hristov escape.

The Macedonian didn’t reappear for the second half, with Derek Young coming on, but it was his brother Darren who forced Gordon into an early save before Andy Tod came close with a header.

There was little evidence, apart from a Miller shot which went just past Derek Stillie’s post, that Hearts were capable of salvaging anything from the game when, in a moment of supreme irony, Richmond awarded them their penalty.

This time it was Miller who was jumping for the ball in the box and went down in a heap when Wilson appeared to make a very light contact on the striker’s back.

The Dunfermline players were incensed, immediately surrounding Richmond in irate complaint, and none more so than Wilson, who was booked.

When the kick was event-ually taken, the calmest man in the ground, Paul Hartley, wrong-footed Stillie.

After that the game opened up and both sides scorned good chances, most notably Jesper Christiansen and Mark Burchill, who had replaced Joe Hamill.

Then, with just seconds remaining, Greg Ross sent over a cross which Tod dived to head past Gordon. It was a dramatic late winner … until Dunfermline’s celebrations were ended when linesman Craven ruled Barry Nicholson had been offside.

Taken from the Sunday Herald