Only crowd stopped this being on par with Juniors

BILL LECKIE
Published: 03rd January 2013

LITTLE Paul Cairney didn’t even have to look up before he made the pass.

His playmaker’s brain told him instinctively where to place it so the centre-backs would be bisected and Eoin Doyle would be in on goal.

The result was textbook, the angled ball into the path of the straight run. After 54 minutes of brainless thud and blunder, it was a moment as precious as finding a ruby on a landfill site.

All Doyle had to do was keep his cool and Hibs would be in front. So no one should have been surprised on a night like this that he showed all the composure of a crack addict in an ID parade and the ball flew in amongst the away fans.

Those supporters cursed the miss. Doyle held his head. The Jambos hordes gave it two fingers in mocking delight.

And Cairney? His punishment for daring to dream that this evening could be dragged off the rubbish tip was instant substitution.

That’ll teach him.

Two minutes before kick-off, the tannoy had boomed the Sparks song ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us’. And by about a minute after, it would become clear that Tynecastle wasn’t big enough for anyone who wanted to play football.

Okay, so punters don’t turn up for a derby expecting to have their breath taken away by the quality. All that matters is the result and the bragging rights.

But even so, you’ve got to say the 17,000 who packed this place last night deserved a showdown which at least came close to matching the stunning backdrop they created.

Instead, sadly, the atmosphere was all that saved this from being on a par with the Juniors.

Thinking about it, maybe the noise was to blame. Maybe it was just so loud out there the players’ feet couldn’t hear the messages their brains tried to send them.

Whatever the reasons, though, it was rank.

Defenders held a rolling contest to see who could clear the highest into the stands.

Midfielders scrambled for space like tramps raking the bins for leftovers.

Strikers were hopelessly outnumbered, so isolated they could have stayed in the warm of the dressing rooms and had about as much of a sight at goal.

When a clear-cut chance finally did come along, only home pair Dylan McGowan and Ryan Stevenson will know how, between them, they managed to bundle the ball wide after keeper Ben Williams fumbled a skidding Mehdi Taouil shot right in the middle of his goal.

Again, though, however they managed it, their finishing honked. At least that and Doyle’s glaring miss were something to distract us from what otherwise was cage-fighting without the cage.

Hearts No 1 Jamie Macdonald was turned into a luminous orange spinning top as he came for a steepling punt and took Doyle’s full weight in the ribs.

Hibs skipper James McPake whirled round on his backside as Stevenson left the foot in and ploughed into him halfway up the shin pad.

The first challenge could easily have been a yellow. The second should have been red.

Yet somehow referee Willie Collum decided both were just part of the rough-and-tumble of it all and kept his cards in his pocket.

On Saturday, I’d watched the same whistler book guys for walking on the cracks in the pavement when Queen’s Park played Rangers. He sent off a Queen’s defender for two ho-hum tackles and let very little else go.

So how come here, amidst infinitely greater intensity, he was quite prepared to accept genuinely dangerous lunges as being fair game?

Consistency, my backside.

In the end, no one who paid their money to be here can possibly have gone home feeling satisfied.

Not something you could say for those in the dugouts, mind, because the longer it went, the more it seemed John McGlynn and Pat Fenlon had settled for what they started with.

For McGlynn, it was another war of attrition at the end of another week of asset-stripping as defender Ryan McGowan became yet another of the heroes who trounced Hibs 5-1 to win the Scottish Cup in May to help keep the wolf from the door.

The Aussie’s younger brother Dylan took his place and did pretty well. In particular, popping up near the end to scrape one off his own line as green shirts piled in on Macdonald’s parry from Doyle’s drive.

As for Hibs? Well, it felt to me like they came for a draw, so they can’t be disappointed.

Fenlon wanted to deny Hearts space and anything else that came his way would have been a bonus.

Had Doyle finished when he was one-on-one from Cairney’s pass, it might even have been hailed as a tactical triumph.

You know, rather than a grinding bore.

Not that Fenlon can be accused of being anti-football.

Far from it. At one point in the first half, as the din burst your ears and the bludgeoned clearance near enough burst the ball, he stepped to the touchline in his great sweatshirt and made a gesture that clearly said: “Foot on the ball, lads. Settle it down. Keep the head and pass it.”

He might as well have asked the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo to pass a maths exam.