St Mirren 1 - 1 Hearts: Saint Carey turns sinner

Published Date: 04 April 2010
By Andrew Smith
IT wouldn't have been a case of counting the point so much as the cost of their inability to conjure up a winner for both St Mirren and Hearts yesterday.
Despite an absolute beezer of 35-year-old free-kick from the home side's Graham Carey, ultimately, neither side did enough to prevail. And that puts serious question marks over Hearts' top six ambitions and the Paisley side's very SPL status.

Jim Jefferies' men will have to wait until St Johnstone host Dundee United tomorrow night to know whether they are better placed than the Perth side for the split deciders next weekend. Meanwhile, Gus MacPherson's side will next Saturday now face a trip to Falkirk side, who moved to within three points of them yesterday. Both managers accepted a draw was a fair result, Hearts earning it after a Marius Zaliukas header straight after the interval cancelled out Carey's corker just before it.

Jefferies was content with the application of his team. He didn't much fancy the foul Ian Brines awarded against Zaliukas – "he "never touched" Michael Higdon, the Hearts manager claimed – though he sportingly praised Carey's "exceptional (deadball] delivery that no keeper could stop". Only "time will tell how important the point" earned in Paisley proves, Jefferies added. Though he then also conceded: "I said before it was in our hands if we won our two games, but there is nothing we can do about it now, we slipped up today."

MacPherson wasn't having it that his players will now head to Falkirk fearful. "It would have been that anyway," the St Mirren manager said. "We will go there confident and our work ethic will be strong." The bodies might be weak in number, however. Only six substitutes were named yesterday as a result of injuries denying MacPherson Craig Dargo, Steven Robb. Steven Thomson suffered a head gash and Jack Ross picked up a knock during the match.

After the frenzied scenes surrounding St Mirren's last home game, that never-heard-of-again 4-0 win over Celtic, it took a full 23 minutes for those in the stands to be roused from their slumber. It was to be a portent of what was to come with Hearts keeper Jamie MacDonald requiring to do his telescopic-arm act to push away a free-kick curled by Carey round the visitors' defence.

Those pair continued their personal duel when the 23-year-old keeper demonstrated terrific agility to claw away another free-kick from the Irishman that this time he had arrowed towards the top corner. Such is the stunning quality and variety of the on-loan Celtic defender's dead-ball prowess, however, that when a third set-piece opportunity arrived a minute from the interval, he took MacDonald out of the equation. Fully 35-yards out, he produced a thunderbolt that ripped home.

But football can take away as quickly as it gives. And while Carey ended the half an the cloud-touching high within two minutes of the restart he had been brought down to earth with a mighty thud. For it was his slip on the left flank that allowed Suso Santana all the time and space to tee-up a cross he drove on to the head of Zaliukas, who powered it in from the middle of the goal. Asked to clarify if Carey was a defender or midfielder afterwards, MacPherson's ire bubbled to the surface when he responded: "He's certainly a midfielder".

Even in the mere 120 seconds that it took for Hearts to equalise following the interval, they exhibited greater urgency than in the entire encounter until that point. They kept at it thereafter, and Paul Gallacher was forced into a couple of smart stops after off-targets from David Obua and Gary Glen was all they could previously muster. The Gorgie side would have been the more relieved after Billy Mehmet forced MacDonald to make a fine stop in the closing seconds.

Hearts played seven minutes of the second period with ten men after Ian Black and Thomson required stitches on head wounds after the pair clattered into each other. Jefferies revealed that it was not that collision but a near miss in his car the day before that was behind Black failing to reappear after treatment. "He had a swerve to avoid a car and jerked his back," he explained. "We had to take him into the ground for an injection today and the back started tightening up when he was in getting stitches." It was day when everything seemed to tighten up for those involved.

Taken from the Scotsman