Hearts earned their first SPL point in what seems like an eternity this afternoon when their ten men fought back from a goal down to draw 1-1 with Kilmarnock at Tynecastle.
The less said about the first half the better from a Hearts point of view, as the sending off of Calum Elliot apart (for two desperately wild lunges, albeit the first one would never have come about had the referee done his job), it was a complete non-event. It didn’t help matters when Paul Di Giacomo scored on the stroke of half-time to give Killie the lead either.
But the second half saw a resurgent Hearts performance, which was, believe it or not, galvanised with the introduction of Saul Mikoliunas shortly into the half. All of a sudden it was Hearts who looked as though they had the extra man and they battered Killie until they eventually got their reward on 63 minutes when Andrius Velicka forced the ball over the line from Christophe Berra’s knockdown.
From then on the home side continued to press, with the energy of Miko and Cesnauskas complementing the industry of the others and they really gave us 45 minutes to be proud of this afternoon. On another day they could have easily ran out as 3-1 or 4-1 winners.
It’s perhaps only a point and Hearts have now dropped a place with St Mirren beating Hibs today, but there was more than enough in that performance to give us some encouragement. If we can build on this and perhaps keep all of our players on the park in the weeks to come, I’d have no fears about our chances of moving up into a more comfortable position in the SPL table.
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Definitely a big improvement in second half. Seems like Miko plays better when Chesney is playing. Looking forward to seeing how we can build on this.