Hearts 0 Kilmarnock 3: Glasses left half-empty

Sunday 17 February 2013

THE production of 3D match programmes was an innovative touch at Tynecastle yesterday, but you fancy the novelty had worn off by the end of a game which became increasingly unsettling to look at for the Hearts supporters.

The whole thing was punctuated by the concession of three goals, a nasty head injury to Darren Barr and the sight of a place in the top six of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League edging further into the distance.

That Hibernian are now looking down on them from among the European places is not going to make the situation any more bearable either.

Visits from Kilmarnock have also tended to prove somewhat uncomfortable as the Ayrshire side have now won on all of their last five trips to Tynecastle, with Paul Heffernan standing out yesterday. And you did not even need a pair of 3D glasses to see it.

The Kilmarnock striker scored a hat-trick to lift his side into the top half of the table on goal difference. Each finish was stabbed deliberately past Jamie MacDonald and the wounds may take time to heal since they accounted for the only real chances the visitors were able to create. There was little surprise that his first came late in the first half, then, James Dayton sending a low pass across goal for Heffernan to prod home.

"It was poor defensively," said Hearts manager John McGlynn. "But it didn't help that we had to change our back four with the injury to Darren Barr."

That moment arrived with a thud after 37 minutes. Barr had been restored to the Hearts defence following the ankle injury suffered by Marius Zaliukas, but it was Barr's fitness which became the more pertinent concern since a clash of heads with Danny Wilson left him sprawled on the turf for a full five minutes.

He was then stretchered off and received oxygen in the dressing room. "He has concussion and a cut on his head, but that's all I know for definite," said McGlynn.

The incident also knocked Hearts off their stride. The Edinburgh side had managed to make the better impression in the first half without really making a dent in the Kilmarnock defence, a trundling shot from Jamie Walker after 40 minutes the closest they came to an opener, while Michael Ngoo had a header bundled off the goal-line midway through the second half.

Still, there is promise in this young Hearts team. The starting line-up featured six Scots plucked from the club's youth system, which was enough to draw Scotland under-21 manager Billy Stark to the capital yesterday. It was a team which is a far cry from the early days of Vladimir Romanov's reign, too, when the most Stark would have taken from the spate of Lithuanian names on show back then was a triple word score in Scrabble.

The Eastern European retreat may well pick up the pace again before the end of the campaign, with Hearts director Sergejus Fedotovas revealing yesterday that talks over the sale of the club are ongoing with "several interested parties".

The news seems timely after Ukio Bankas, the Lithuanian bank owned by Romanov, went into administration last week, although Fedotovas remains adamant that the club will not be affected directly.

"We don't having anything to fear," he said.

Heffernan was a present danger, though, and he added a second goal after 65 minutes when he swivelled in the box to force a shot into the net. The striker completed his hat-trick six minutes later – MacDonald only able to palm a shot from Borja Perez into the path of the Irishman, who duly poked in his 10th goal of the campaign.

"He has put the three goals away really well," said Kilmarnock manager Kenny Shiels.

Taken from the Herald