Hearts' Elliott praises MacDonald for saves after costly gaffe

Published Date: 12 September 2011
By BARRY ANDERSON
STEPHEN ELLIOTT stressed today that Jamie MacDonald's shot-stopping secured a point for Hearts at Inverness just as much as his late equaliser, and insisted the goalkeeper should not feel guilty about gifting the Highlanders their goal.
MacDonald's slip inside his penalty area presented Gregory Tade with a straightforward opener in Saturday's 1-1 draw. Elliott then converted David Templeton's cross with nine minutes remaining for his first goal of the season. In between, MacDonald produced several impressive saves to keep Inverness at bay.

The hosts cut through the Hearts defence rather easily at times but MacDonald, showing character after his error, denied Tade twice and Richie Foran to keep his team in the match. Elliott believes the goalkeeper had every reason to be pleased with his recovery. "He knows he's made a mistake but, to be fair to him, after his mistake he's stood up and made three or four fantastic saves which kept us in the game," said the Irishman. He's as much to thank as anyone for the point.

"The manager was right to step in and stop him apologising to us in the dressing room after the game. It's how you react to mistakes and he proved that he can react really well. He kept us in the game.

"They had a lot of chances at 1-0 up and could have killed the game off. We dug in there and we got our equaliser in the end. From our point of view, we take the point. The manager has us playing a different way, he's the boss and we need to listen to him. If we do that I'm sure we will improve."

Elliott admitted being relieved at opening his goalscoring account. "The last couple of weeks I've hit the woodwork and it's come back out but on Saturday it trickled over the line so I was pleased to see it go in," he said.

Taken from the Scotsman