A case of too little, too late

IGNOMINY FOR VLADIMIR ROMANOV and Hearts as, despite a very late flourish, the SPL's third-best funded side meekly accepted bottom six status. The truth, as Stephen Frail admitted, is that his side deserved to get nothing out of this game.

Kilmarnock should have been home and hosed by half time. Their stalwart central defender, Fraser Wright, was sent off for a second yellow card in the 93rd minute and the resultant free-kick nearly brought Hearts an undeserved winner.

Aberdeen and Falkirk will now scrap it out for the final top six place at Pittodrie on Monday night, but although these two games should have played simultaneously in the interests of fairness, yesterday's draw will have no material bearing on the outcome.
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Frail was an hour emerging from the visitors' dressing room, and his despair was apparent. "At times we were treating it like a testimonial," he said, "and Kilmarnock certainly weren't. "We would have had no complaints if we'd gone into half-time two or three goals down.

"The game just about summed up the whole season. There's always a turmoil that surrounds the club, and some negativity is still there. My job from January was to win as many points as I could and we've won 22 against 20 before that."

Hearts made three changes from the side which beat Dundee United, with a first start for Fernando Screpis, who took up position in front of the back four. Gary Locke returned for the home side, who immediately looked the better side.

Although Saulius Mikoliunas screwed a shot wide, there was little evidence of the urgency you would have expected in the visitors' play. Kestutis Ivaskevicius, one of the changes, was to be a virtual passenger until substituted in the 57th minute, while Screpis was also having difficulty coming to terms with the game.

Instead, with Invincibile getting the better of Ibrahim Tall and Christophe Berra in the air there was danger every time Killie got the ball into the Hearts area. Corners from the right were particularly discomfiting Frail's side and had Bryson got a touch to David Lilley's flick on, Killie would have gone ahead.

Tall was required to block from the dangerous Bryson just before Tim Clancy, who was taking every opportunity to surge forward, hit the post after Invincibile had flicked on yet another Fernandez inswinger from the right.

Killie had done everything but score, and again they came close when Basso parried a Clancy shot into the path of Mehdi Taouil. He slipped it to Bryson, but the midfielder failed to make it count, scooping the ball over the bar from six yards.

Invincibile then rattled the bar with a header but was adjudged to have fouled Tall. Hearts' lack of purpose and cohesion was embarrassing, but the early second half replacement of Ivaskevicius by Gary Glen unsurprisingly coincided with Hearts finally getting a foothold on the match. In the 54th minute Berra's downward header from a Laryea Kingston free-kick bounced just the wrong side of Alan Combe's right hand post. Ten minutes later Frail removed Kingston from the action.

The move, nevertheless, proved another positive one by Hearts and allowed Kingston's replacement, Michael Stewart, to link up with the previously lumbering figure of Christian Nade in easily the visitors' most constructive move of the match. Nade's shot was saved by Combe but fell to Ruben Palazuelos and it took a brave block by Wright to keep the scores level.

With the visitors having, belatedly, arisen from their slumbers and Killie finding a second breath the game developed into an end-to-end affair but the real drama was kept until the very end. The match was in its 93rd minute when Wright received a second yellow card, this time for a foul on Nade, and was sent off by Craig Thomson.

That left Stewart to take the free-kick on the right edge of the Killie box, and the ball found Nade whose downward header bounced up and had to be touched over the bar by Combe. It was a close one, but Hearts didn't deserve to win after their dreadful first-half performance. Wright, meanwhile, will spend his suspension recuperating from an ankle operation he is due to undergo this week.

Taken from the Sunday Herald