Rudi marvellous for Hearts

TOM ENGLISH
AT CELTIC PARK

CELTIC 1
HEARTS 1

YOU didn't need to strain your eyes to figure out who took most from Parkhead yesterday, the sight of Steven Pressley and Paul Hartley hugging on the halfway line was a clue, particularly when half the Celtic team had trooped off by that stage. Rudi Skacel, too, gave a slight hint at his state of mind when leading the charge to the Hearts end and waving frantically at the, by now, delirious Hearts supporters.

Skacel called on his teammates to follow his lead but he needn't have bothered. They were right behind him in any case. Was it over the top, this whooping and hollering? Not really. Had Hearts bent and scraped for their draw then you might say that their reaction was excessive. Had they been left hanging on in the face of relentless waves of Celtic attacking then there would have been less honour in their result. But the visitors competed on level terms. Nobody can deny that.

"Tense match. Flew by," said Gordon Strachan. "Crackin' game. Great advert," said George Burley. It was all that. A deflected goal for Craig Beattie, a swift reply from Skacel, buckets of chances thereafter and stalemate in the end. Justice.

"I expected it to be intense but it was more than I expected," the Celtic manager admitted when he sat among us. "The physical contact was immense. Good players trying to play and good players stopping them. They defended very well. We pushed and pressed. We couldn't have done any more. It needed a bit of genius or a mistake. They got their goal from a mistake." He never mentioned that, ludicrously, Skacel was booked for celebrating that goal, when seizing on a communication malfunction between Paul Telfer and Artur Boruc. "A stud out of touch," hissed Burley. "The linesman called it and he was halfway down the pitch. Amazing."

What's even more amazing is that it was the fourth time this season - he has now scored eight times - that Skacel has been booked for celebrating. As Paul Hartley said later, the boy is either going to have to stop celebrating or stop scoring.

So, Hearts remain three points clear of Celtic and 10 points clear of Rangers. They have beaten Alex McLeish's team and have matched Strachan's side in their own raucous place. Strachan was generous but, then, he has never been anything but. What about the people who doubt Hearts' ability to stay the course, we asked. "Which people," replied Strachan. "How many are there? Two, three, four, five? Two million. How many?

After yesterday: not many.

"My opinion," Strachan added, "has not changed. With their finance they have added really good players. Anybody in football, or those who know their football, know that Hearts are a threat not just to us but to everybody."

What noise we heard at the start, noise like these Hearts players will not have experienced since they began their revolution. It is hard to measure such things but the intensity of the Celtic supporters seemed greater yesterday; louder, lustier, all here to unsettle the visitors. But that is the thing about Hearts: they are tough, physically and mentally.

"We showed character in abundance," said Burley. "The heads didn't drop after their goal, there was no panic. They've been magnificent all season. We came here with no fear. We tried to pass it, tried to give Celtic problems which we did. We kept our discipline. It's never easy in front of 60,000 fans but we had lots of desire. We didn't want to get beaten and we had no fear about trying to win the game."

That much was obvious. They hushed Celtic's noise a little after a minute and a half when Hartley sent in a fizzing shot which Boruc had to push over the crossbar and they silenced it altogether - for a moment, at least - when Andy Webster threw himself at a Skacel free-kick shortly after, narrowly missing a connection that would surely have seen him score.

Celtic's goal was a bitter pill, not just because it came against the run of play but because it took a horrid deflection which made Steve Banks' job of stopping it an impossible one. Bobo Balde nearly finished them a few moments later, his header slapping off the Hearts bar and away to safety. These minutes raised the possibility of an early kill. Hearts knew different.

It was a game of rapidly changing fortunes, an impossible one to nail down. Neither side ever had a sustained period of pressure, neither gave the impression of a gathering momentum that would sweep them to victory. What we had were chances, plenty of them; scattered about like confetti. Stilian Petrov missed at one end then Samuel Camazzola scooped over at the other, Alan Thompson had a shot saved, Skacel had a heavy touch that cost him dear, Shaun Maloney had a viciously bending free-kick pushed out. In the next breath, Webster headed over from point-blank range and no sooner had Hearts come to terms with a fine opportunity lost than Michael Pospisil did precisely the same thing.

End to end, box to box. John Hartson come off the bench in the midst of it. When was the last time Celtic began a match of this importance without the totem of their attack? Hartson is slowly slipping out of the picture under Strachan, his hulking presence not what the new manager wants from his front players. The little spell on the sidelines may have taken something from the Welsh international's confidence. Seven minutes from the end he was presented with the kind of chance that he would have gobbled up in the past, a header from close in, with little disruption around him. He put it over. End of story.

Burley beamed afterwards. He revisited the subject of the transfer window and the players he may sign in January. Grist to the mill. Before then, Fredi Bobic will arrive at Tynecastle during the week. The former German international is no spring chicken - he's 34 and creaking a little - but he has a pedigree. Ten goals in 37 internationals is proof of that. Hearts just want a look at him before they commit, they'll put him on trial and see what comes of it. Their own trial? The jury's in. Game on.

Taken from the Scotsman