HEARTWARMER
Walker comes in from the cold to stun Dundee and rescue Gorgie side
ON a freezing, foggy winter’s day, Hearts had cause to thank a man brought in from the cold.
Jamie Walker has barely featured under Robbie Neilson this season and looks likely to depart Tynecastle at some point, either next month or when his deal ends in the summer.
If he is to move on in the coming weeks, with St Johnstone and Livingston touted as possible destinations, then this was the ideal farewell present from the boyhood Hearts fan.
Sent on from the substitutes bench after 58 minutes in a bid to breathe fresh life into a forward line that had toiled all afternoon, Walker enjoyed a productive cameo.
The 28-year-old forward proved to be in the right place at the right time to bag the only goal of the game before celebrating with the away fans amassed in front of him.
It was far from Hearts’ most polished performance of this campaign but they did enough to grind out a victory that consolidated their grip on third spot in the table.
For Dundee, this was a fourth defeat in a row, with only Livingston’s late equaliser against Ross County preventing James McPake’s side from falling into the relegation play-off berth.
Their cause here wasn’t helped by the absence of seven first-team regulars due to a combination of injury, suspension and, in Jason Cummings’ case, the surreal.
Goodness knows what the striker was thinking when he decided to attend Open Goal’s live show at Glasgow’s Hydro dressed as The Joker, which didn’t go down well with his manager who banished him from the club on Friday when Cummings turned up ‘unfit to train’.
His future will be decided at a disciplinary hearing tomorrow but it seems unlikely at this juncture that he will play for Dundee again.
In Cummings’ absence another wayward striker, Leigh Griffiths, was handed a first start since October, while McPake drafted in two 17-year-olds, Craig Donald and Callum Lamb, to allow him to have five options rather than just three on a vastly-depleted bench.
Hearts were without suspended Josh Ginnelly and Liam Boyce, replaced by Ben Woodburn and Andy Halliday, and then had to regroup again midway through the first half when Stephen Kingsley couldn’t recover from an early knock. Alex Cochrane came on in his place.
Those changes, and Dundee’s own personnel issues, did little to help a contest that struggled to get into any kind of rhythm to the point that, had the fog caused an early postponement, few inside Dens Park would likely have complained.
Willie Collum’s particular brand of pernickety officiating did nothing to help the flow of the game either.
A scrappy first half produced only two legitimate chances of note, with Woodburn, the forward on loan from Liverpool, lifting a bouncing ball over the crossbar in Hearts’ only real scoring opportunity.
At the other end, Dundee striker Danny Mullen would have been relieved to see the assistant’s flag go up after he had botched a header right in front of goal.
Paul McGowan then set up Luke McCowan, whose drilled effort was well kept out by Craig Gordon. Beyond that there was little to warm up the fans on a cold afternoon.
Boyce was a big miss for Hearts. Without the Northern Irishman, the visitors had no physical presence in attack, and the Dundee central defensive pair of Liam Fontaine and Jordan McGhee comfortably mopped up every hopeful high ball forward. With Gary Mackay-Steven on one wing and Barrie McKay on the other, Hearts had the players capable of opening up the Dundee backline with pace and trickery.
However, both commodities were in short supply as the Tynecastle side huffed and puffed to little avail for long spells.
The large travelling support — mischievously announced initially as 1986 (the year Hearts failed to win the league after losing at Dens) before being corrected to the real figure of 1386 — were making their own entertainment by this point, cheering loudly when Griffiths earned a yellow card.
Walker emerged from the bench for his first Hearts appearance in three months, adding a bit of fresh impetus to the attack.
He was booked in his first involvement and then had the ball in the net not long after, although Collum had long since blown his whistle for an earlier infringement.
It was one-way traffic, however, by this point, the feeling growing that Hearts might yet find a winner before the game was over. Walker was in the midst of it all, fastening on to Halliday’s ball into the box before volleying just wide.
The winger’s moment was coming, though, and it duly arrived 15 minutes from time.
Fontaine did brilliantly to steer Aaron McEneff’s shot on to a post but as the ball trickled along the line Walker was the quickest to react to smash it beyond the despairing Adam Legzdins in the Dundee goal.
McKay looked for a penalty shortly after running into Fontaine but Collum wasn’t interested, before Cammy Devlin was wasteful with one final Hearts chance.
It didn’t matter in the end, with Walker’s intervention enough to send the travelling supporters home happy.