Robbie: 'That one's for our supporters'

HEARTS star Robbie Neilson today dedicated the Tennent's Scottish Cup semi-final thrashing of Hibs to the thousands of fans who lined the streets of Glasgow to greet the arrival of the team bus at Hampden Park.

The Hearts squad were stunned when they arrived in the south side of Glasgow at 10.45am to find they needed a police escort to make their way through the throng of fans there to cheer them on.
7 Wonders

With the eagerly-anticipated clash kicking-off at 12.15pm, a large portion of the Gorgie outfit's support had taken no chance that they could be stuck in the anticipated M8 chaos by arriving hours before the tie was due to start.

And Neilson, who was on the books at Tynecastle the last time Hearts lifted the coveted trophy back in 1998, admitted the scenes were reminiscent of that famous day and gave the players all the motivation they needed to go out and record an emphatic win.

"It was absolutely unbelievable that the fans got here so early and welcomed us the way they did," said Neilson, the longest serving player at the club.

"You could see looking around the bus that some of the foreign players in particular were absolutely stunned that the fans had made such an effort for the game. We were there an hour and a half before kick-off but it looked as though they had been there for a while before that. It really gave the boys a real lift going into the game.

"We were obviously really up for the game anyway but seeing that just made us all even more determined to go out and make sure that we booked our place in the final.

"They were all partying away and it was as though they felt we had won the cup before a ball was even kicked!

"It certainly reminded me of those scenes when Hearts did win the Cup back in 1998.

"Even Valdas [Ivanauskas] and John McGlynn mentioned it in the team-talk and told us that the fans had made a big effort to get there and paid a lot of money and now it was up to us to send them home happy."

And at the end of a dramatic 90 minutes of action "happy" probably doesn't do justice to just how the 21,000 Hearts fans packed inside Hampden felt.

Even before a ball was kicked, however, you sensed that the Hearts supporters felt it was going to be their day.

As Carnival de Paris belted out the speaker system, they bounced up and down and sang their hearts out while the Hibs support remained strangely subdued.

And inspired by man-of-the-match Paul Hartley, their faith proved to be fully justified as after a 15-minute spell which Hibs just about shaded, the Gorgie outfit were well in control of proceedings.

A hat-trick from Hartley and a great piece of opportunism from Edgaras Jankauskas may have given the scoreline a slightly unfair complexion, but there was no doubting that Hearts deserve their place in the final.

And Neilson believes that the credit for that should go to the Jambos' management team of Ivanauskas, pictured below right, and McGlynn.

The Lithuanian's appointment as head coach, until at least the end of the season, initially raised a few eyebrows, but Neilson believes that both he and McGlynn deserve as much credit as the players for booking a place in the tournament's final on May 13.

"I think we started very brightly and probably deserved to take the lead earlier than we did, but just couldn't get the goal," said Scotland Future Squad captain Neilson. "They then came into the match and we probably got the goal when they were having their best spell, which knocked the stuffing out of them a wee bit.

"In the second half we got the goals at just the right time, and in the end they lost their discipline a wee bit and we were able to see the game out.

"I think our game plan paid off because we tried to play at a really high tempo. Then, after we did go ahead, we were able to pick them off with some really good play. We knew that they had some really fast players like Ivan Sproule, but we had a system to try and counter that.

"I think it worked really well because they were reduced to shooting from long range most of the time and we knew it would take something special to beat a goalkeeper like Craig Gordon.

"So both Valdas and John deserve credit for that because I think that anyone who was at the game could see that we merited our win."

Meanwhile, hat-trick hero Hartley admitted he could hardly have picked a better game to bag his first ever treble at any level - and insisted he was taking credit for every goal.

The midfielder's second strike, a quickly taken free-kick that caught Hibs goalkeeper Zibi Malkowski unawares at his near post, had initially appeared to be an error on the Polish stopper's part, although Scotland midfielder Hartley insisted that such a judgement would be doing him an injustice.

"It was a great free-kick," he insisted. "I saw that the goalkeeper was off his line and that they only had one man in the wall and just went for it.

"On another day it could have gone anywhere, but thankfully yesterday was just one of the days when things seemed to go right.

"I definitely meant it and then to get the penalty and score a hat-trick just capped off a memorable day for myself, but also for the whole club.

"Personally, I couldn't even have dreamt that my first ever hat-trick at any level would come in a semi-final of the cup against our fiercest rivals.

"I'm not even sure that it's sunk in yet. Hopefully within the next few days I'll be able to appreciate exactly what we've done.

"I thought all the lads were superb. To be honest we could have won by even more in the end.

"I've always known that on our day, with our quick passing and dangerous forwards, we were capable of something like this.

"I'm just over the moon that it all came together for us in such a big game."

Taken from the Scotsman