Having a bawl

Dunfermline 1 / Hearts 2
Stewart Fisher at East End Park

HEARTS showed they have lost none of their appetite for the SPL battle with a brutal victory over 10-man Dunfermline, but for the home side this was a case of careless talk costs lives.

Jim Leishman insisted last night that his assistant Craig Robertson had been needlessly sent to the stands after the fourth official overheard a harmless discussion between Robertson and his opposite number John McGlynn. The incident had been triggered when the home side felt Julien Brellier had exaggerated contact with Andy Tod to get the Dunfermline veteran sent off late on.

“Craig felt the boy has gone down too easily with Andy Tod,” Leishman said. “Andy said he didn’t make contact, and the boys fallen down and Craig was a wee bit incensed about that. But he wasn’t speaking to the referee or the fourth official, he was speaking to John McGlynn, and the two of them are good pals.

“ They are talking to each other in the dugout – that is all they are doing. And they have to shout, because of the noise of the crowd. You should ask John McGlynn if he was offended.”

Leishman’s opposite number, Valdas Ivanauskas, had the satisfaction of watching his side shrug off their tiredness from the Champions League to keep pace with Celtic at the top of the SPL.

“It was the first game so it was very important to start with a victory,” Ivanauskas said. “We needed three points and we got the three points.”

The club travel to Bosnia for the second leg of their Champions League qualifier against Siroki Brijeg this Wednesday, and, with AEK Athens waiting in the wings, Ivanauskas rested Deividas Cesnauskis and Ibrahim Tall, while there was no sighting of Mauricio Pinilla, the Chilean international who has arrived on a season-long loan from Sporting Lisbon.

The surprises started with the teamsheets, with Souleymane Bamba, an Ivory Coast international central defender – who has played at both Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus yet somehow arrived at East End Park on a free transfer this summer – included, but there was no place for last season’s top scorer Mark Burchill, or Owen Morrison, a highly-rated summer recruit from Sheffield United. Richie Valens’ most famous song was played in the Ivory Coast man’s honour pre-game, and Bamba would remain centre of the attention for most of the day, including being unfairly penalised on the edge of his own box for the free-kick which led to Michal Pospisil’s late winner.

Noel Whelan famously went AWOL at Aberdeen a couple of seasons ago and, just one day after being rushed into East End Park, he only lasted four minutes here. The former Leeds striker limped off with a serious- looking injury after four minutes and was replaced by auxiliary striker Andy Tod. Dunfermline, already with an injury list that includes Scott Thomson, Jim McIntyre, Greg Ross and Darren Young, could have done without it.

The injury punctured a promising Dunfermline start and before long it was Hearts making the running. Roman Bednar is exhibiting real sharpness at the start of the season and, after a goal against Siroki Brijeg in midweek, he was soon causing havoc again . Roddy McKenzie, dressed in fetching day-glo orange , was smartly across to defy the Czech striker’s header from Saulius Mikoliunas’s whipped cross, but the goalkeeper must have wished he was donning more sober garb as his misjudgment gifted his former team the opening goal.

McKenzie rushed out of his box to chase a ball he was never likely to win, and had not recovered his ground by the time Michal Pospisil crossed and Bednar diverted in at the near post.

With referee Brian Winter turning a blind eye early on, this was a feisty start to the season in Fife. Nine names were taken and one sent off by the end, but at times during the second half Dunfermline’s willingness to compete had Hearts on the ropes. It was hardly against the run of play when former Jambo Stephen Simmons equalised , sneaking in at the far post to force Scott Muirhead’s corner into the net, despite the best efforts of Aguiar on the line.

“I loved it,” Simmons said. “I had been thinking about it all morning.”

The pacey Frederic Daquin should, by rights, have given Dunfermline the lead when clean through on Gordon, only to inexplicably take the ball to the byeline. But Hearts still had enough in the legs to conjure moments of real quality. It came as little surprise when Aguiar curled in a free-kick which hit the junction of post and bar, allowing Christophe Berra to chaperone Pospisil’s finish into the empty net. Dunfermline were nursing a grievance and, by the end, their persecution complex was complete.

Taken from the Sunday Herald