Christmas is so crucial for Dee — O’Hara

DUNDEE’S Mark O’Hara is delighted his injury frustration is at an end and is backing his team to follow up their impressive display at Celtic with a win against Hearts on Friday night.

The 21-year-old has been a stand-out for the Dark Blues this season and his absence has been sorely felt over the past two months.

The former Killie man had to have surgery on a hernia problem and missed the last two months of action.

O’Hara, though, returned to action, making an impact from the bench in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at Parkhead.

The midfielder entered the game with half-an-hour to go with the score at 2-0 and almost helped Dundee perform an unlikely comeback.

It wasn’t to be but O’Hara says there is plenty the Dark Blues can take from the performance against the champions.

Overall, though, he’s just happy to be out there playing again. “I’m delighted to be back,” he said. “It was obviously a disappointing result but I’m delighted to be back — it’s been the longest two months of my life!

“It’s been so frustrating, there’s nothing worse than sitting out and not being involved.

“I’d only trained twice last week before the game, so the manager was asking how I felt being on the bench – I was delighted, I felt I could bring something to the team.

“After the Celtic game we can only take positives.

“We know the fixtures over the Christmas period are absolutely massive and we need to target winning most of them, if not all of them.

“There’s a lot of confidence we can take from our performance on Saturday and there’s no reason why we can’t win some games.

“We just need to be more positive. The game plan worked to a tee at Celtic Park. We absorbed the pressure and then when we went for it, we could have and probably should have nicked something from the game.”

Dundee had the chance to grab a