Hearts aflutter until the end

FALKIRK 1 Gow 45
HEARTS 2 Hartley 22, Jankauskas 81

MAYBE Valdas Ivanauskas was still traumatised at having seen his team wait until the 81st minute to beat away Falkirk's robust challenge, but in the aftermath of this nervy victory he had the look of a man who was not exactly on top of things.

We asked him if his boss, Vladmir Romanov, was at the match? "I don't know," he shrugged. Would he be speaking to him later? "No". Er, when would they talk next? "I don't know," he replied. Clearly, Valdas is going to be a joy to deal with for however long he holds the reins at Tynecastle.

Turns out that Vladimir was at the Falkirk Stadium yesterday and he would have been suffering the same palpitations as every other Hearts fan.

Paul Hartley put the visitors ahead after 22 minutes, Alan Gow equalised in the 45th, hitting home the rebound from his well-saved penalty, and from then until Edgaras Jankauskas's somewhat fortunate finish nine minutes from the end, the outcome was in the balance.

It was aggressive and it was scrappy and it was madcap at times. There were bookings galore and no shortage of bad feeling. Liam Craig put in a fine shift in midfield for Falkirk, but he lost his head on more than one occasion and just when things were getting particularly fruity at the beginning of the second half, his team-mate Jack Ross had to lead him away from a flashpoint for his own safety.

From Hearts' point of view, some of the antics of Rudi Skacel left a lot to be desired. Save for an early shot and the cross which supplied the goal for Hartley, his performance was nothing to write home about. His petulance is wearying sometimes and there were allegations of goading of the Falkirk players after the game.

"You can behave with dignity," said Ross in a pointed remark. "You have good players at clubs like Rangers and Celtic who can do that. And there are guys in the Hearts team, too. Good pros like [Takis] Fyssas."

Like Skacel, Julien Brellier did not have one of his better days, either. Romanov, as the world knows, is not a fan of the midfielder and that burden has been a heavy load for the Frenchman, who has been excellent for most of the season. "It's not nice," he said about Romanov's criticisms. "I read the newspapers like everybody else."

Hearts took the points but they also have a headache ahead of their Scottish Cup semi-final against Hibs on Sunday. Steven Pressley suffered a cut to his head in the first half, which required three stitches, and he never reappeared for the second half. He looked dazed. "I don't have a good feeling about next week," said Ivanauskas.

The caretaker's first selection was always going to be regarded as a Romanov team no matter what combination of players he came up with, and you have to be suspicious about Andy Webster's absence yesterday. Webster, who has refused to sign a new deal at Tynecastle, supposedly went down with a stomach bug on Thursday but you don't know your Romanov history if you accept that at face value. We shall see.

A missing defender, however accomplished, should not have been a major problem for Hearts in places like Falkirk. And it wasn't. Webster's replacement, Jose Goncalves, put in a tremendous performance but Hearts' trouble wasn't at the back. It was further up the field. Falkirk can be doughty opponents, even though their team was made up of largely of kids. John Hughes gave debuts to Mark Howard in goal and Karl Dodd in defence, and when he listed the number of real youngsters in his side he seemed to go on forever.

"They gave it everything," he said. "They were tenacious and brave and I couldn't have asked for anything more from them. They're the youngest team in the Premierleague and I feel for them tonight."

They rarely win but they can be a total nightmare to play against when their mood is right. Here, their mood was most definitely right. They were aggressive and dogged. They created precious little but they had a rough edge about them that Hearts found difficult to handle.

Falkirk have won just once in their last 16 SPL games but in that run they've gone down by the odd goal on ten occasions. That tells you that they're fighting hard for their manager.

Unquestionably, they deserved to take something from this game.

Hearts struck first, Skacel scampering down the left and squaring for Hartley to put it away. For a team that has not scored two goals in a league match since December, all thoughts of a home victory pretty much died there and then. But Falkirk had a draw to chase and chase they did.

If Hearts thought they were going to stroll to victory then they were disabused of the notion in injury time at the end of the first half when Falkirk levelled it. They won a free kick on the edge of the box which had Ivanauskas apoplectic on the touchline. "Never a free kick," he said. He had no argument with the penalty decision that followed, however. Roman Bednar stupidly blocked Alan Gow's effort with his hand. Alan Freeland pointed to the spot, Gow stepped up, had his kick saved by Craig Gordon but then followed up to score on the rebound.

Hearts replaced Skacel with young Calum Elliot midway through the second half and it was Elliot who provided the purpose and the accuracy that helped clinch the game. Nine minutes from the end, he cruised up the right-hand side of the pitch before picking out Jankauskas with a precise pass. The big striker's first touch was on the heavy side and his finish had more than a stroke of luck to it, the ball hitting Ross and rebounding into Jankauskas before making its way into the net.

"A poor goal to give away," bemoaned Hughes. "It's the story of our season. But you have to give Hearts credit. They dug in after losing their captain and after what happened to their management during the week. I wish we could do that."

Hughes is still chasing the two wins he reckons will be enough to keep Falkirk in the SPL next season. Hearts will need a lot more than that if they want to get to the Champions League and they won't find them playing like this. Maybe when Ivanauskas said he didn't know if Romanov was watching he was indulging in a little wishful thinking. This wasn't exactly the nirvana he was looking for when sacking his manager last week.

Taken from the Scotsman