Hearts defender Kevin McHattie loses appeal over red card as Danny Wilson apologises for 'sheep' blast at Dons

HEARTS have lost their appeal against the red card shown to Kevin McHattie during their 2-1 win over Aberdeen.

McHattie was shown a straight red card by Alan Muir for denying the opposition an obvious goalscoring opportunity following a penalty-box challenge on Calvin Zola.

Replays showed McHattie had got his foot to the ball but a disciplinary tribunal decided he had made illegitimate contact with Zola in doing so and rejected the club's claim for wrongful dismissal.

The left-back will now miss Saturday's Scottish Premiership clash at Inverness along with captain Danny Wilson, who was shown a red card after the game for using foul and abusive language following an incident in the tunnel.

Hearts manager Gary Locke revealed Wilson had apologised to his team-mates for his derogatory remarks, which were aimed at the opposing team's players following a fiery encounter which also saw Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes and Hearts assistant Billy Brown sent to the stand.

The former Hearts skipper, speaking at Hampden where he was helping to publicise a football managers' health check project, said: "Danny has apologised to the players which I fully expected him to do.

"That is one of the reasons I made him captain. He is a young lad but he handles himself very well but he let himself down after the game on Saturday.

"He made a poor remark and we will deal with that in-house.

"He has been fantastic since the season started so it is a huge blow to lose him and obviously we have lost Kevin as well, two huge losses to the team because I think we have defended well since the season started.

"I laid down the law at the start of the season, and said we can't afford any stupid bookings and suspensions so Danny will be fined in-house and hopefully we will learn from our mistakes."

Taken from the Daily Record