Michael Stewart: Victory will be our tribute to fallen war heroes

Colin Duncan

MICHAEL STEWART reckons beating St Mirren today would be the best tribute Hearts' foreign legion can pay the Tynecastle legends who fell in the Great War.

The Edinburgh club will pay respects to the seven members of the Jambos team who died serving their country in the first World War at a Remembrance Day service at Haymarket tomorrow.

But midfielder Stewart, the SPL ambassador for Poppyscotland, is anxious to honour the men of the McCrae Battalion 24 hours earlier at Love Street.

Hearts have failed to win any of their last five matches and have collected three points just once since August.

Stewart admits their form hasn't been good enough but feels this would be a perfect and poignant time to arrest that poor sequence of results.

He said: "It is a big occasion for the club this weekend and the best way to pay tribute is to collect three points.

"When the foreign players came to Hearts they were not aware of the history of the club but when it comes to this time of year it's something that is spoken about.

"They know about the importance of this weekend and of attending the Remembrance Service at Haymarket.

"But we can't afford top be distracted from the goal of getting three points and once we do that everybody can go home happy and talk about why history is so important.

"The club has a big part to play within the community and we do appreciate the sacrifices people have made."

Despite winning just once in seven matches - 1-0 home success over Inverness - Stewart is confident Hearts can mount a European challenge.

The Scotland international feels there have been mitigating factors for the lack of games won and points to the fact Hearts are just one victory away from moving into third spot behind the Old Firm.

He said: "We are still positive about the way the season has panned out and it's only small things that have contributed to us not picking up more points.

We lost a last-minute goal against Falkirk, it was the same against Kilmarnock, the ref chopped a goal off for whatever reason at Hibs and against Aberdeen there was a debatable penalty incident.

"It's not as if the whole team is dysfunctional and we are not playing well.

"It's encouraging to see we are only a couple of points off third because we could be six or seven points better off.

"We can take comfort from that fact and hopefully things will level themselves out over the course of the season.

"We have gone five games without winning but we are still in the mix for Europe."

Hearts began the campaign with three consecutive home wins and boss Csaba Laszlo insists his players need to rediscover the spirit that carried them over the line against Motherwell, Inverness and St Mirren.

But as the Hungarian called for unity it's interesting to note the Tynecastle outfit have failed to win since the club failed to pay the player's wages.

Laszlo said: "We need to find the winning mentality we had at the start of the season when we played St Mirren and Motherwell.

St Mirren are a compact team who play aggressive football and we have to match them.

"We need to stay together. If you have the will to win you can beat teams better than you.

"If you don't have the will then the quality always wins. That happened against Celtic last week."

Hearts welcome back Larry Kingston and David Obua for the trip to Paisley while Hristos Karipidis will undergo a late fitness test.

Laszlo added: "Hristos took a knock on the leg and is still in pain. He should be OK but we will decide in the morning.

"We must be careful about Kingston playing 90 minutes. Obua has started training and is back in the squad."

Taken from the Daily Record