VALIANT FEW
Ten-man Killie show guts to see off Hearts
THIS was sheer heroism from Kilmarnock at Rugby Park. Battling for their Premiership lives, and conceding a calamitous goal after seven minutes, Derek McInnes’s side stormed at Hearts, claimed two goals back, endured a red card for captain Rory McKenzie after 60 minutes, yet somehow saw this game out in front of a passionate home support.
If Killie stay up in seven weeks’ time, they might well look back to this gutsy win on the opening day of April as a key moment. McInnes could have asked nothing more of his players, who not only played some eye-catching football, but showed supreme fitness levels to run themselves ragged in keeping Hearts out.
But Hearts? Dear me, what a flimsy, powder-puff threat in the final third. When Lawrence Shankland struck so early, you thought this might give Robbie Neilson’s men a keen momentum. Instead, the visitors were pushed onto the back foot by Kilmarnock, who played with sheer adventure as they prised their visitors apart. That is now four league losses in five for Hearts.
Having watched these opening 60 minutes — prior to going down to 10 men — the Killie fans here were surely entitled to ask: where have their players been hiding such form over this desperate, nerve-shredding season?
McInnes and the home support could hardly contain themselves over the final minutes. As pitiful as the visitors had been, how many times have a team been stabbed in the heart in the dying seconds? When the final whistle blew, the Kilmarnock manager and his staff embraced euphorically.
‘It was a fantastic win,’ said McInnes. ‘We have felt, against the likes of St Johnstone and Motherwell recently, that we’ve had the points ripped away from us. We only had two points to show from these two strong performances.
‘Today we needed to see that game out, and we did so with ten men. It was heroic at times, and I thought our effort was brilliant. The connection with the support was there, too, and we are going to need that.
‘It sometimes felt like we were on the edge — like we were playing last-minute football for 40 minutes or so — but we restricted a very strong Hearts team, littered with top players, to very little. It was a deserved win.’
Yet in the very opening minutes, disaster struck Killie. Two weeks earlier McInnes had endured a hapless goal conceded against St Johnstone which cost his side the three points, and here were Kilmarnock shooting themselves in the foot again.
There was no great danger around Jeriel Dorsett when he gathered the ball deep down his own left flank. But the defender opted to play a blind pass back towards a presumed team-mate, Joe Wright, only for Shankland to pounce on the ball and rifle a shot beyond Sam Walker. It was a fine finish by the Hearts striker, but a self-inflicted wound for the home side.
Yet Kilmarnock kept up their spirit, refused to wallow in self-pity, and began to take this game to Hearts. Jordan Jones and Kyle Vassell began to pester the away rearguard and it was these two players who contrived to find an equaliser after 22 minutes.
Zander Clark spilled Liam Donnelly’s 18-yard drive, and then appeared to trip Vassell as the striker homed in on the loose ball. It required a VAR check but referee Euan Anderson’s spot-kick decision stood, and Danny Armstrong hammered the ball past Clark for 1-1.
Kilmarnock really were playing some joyous, energetic football, with Hearts spending much of this game on the back foot. A Vassell effort drifted just over and Hearts were forced to make a number of blocks on the edge of their own box. The Rugby Park faithful, after a dire start, were roused.
Kilmarnock were rewarded with a deserved second goal just before half-time, and this time it was Hearts’ defending — and that of goalkeeper Clark — which again seemed suspect. Armstrong’s whipped cross had real sting about it, and the Hearts keeper made a fist of it, missing the ball and allowing Christian Doidge to bundle home at the far post.
Hearts were forced to replace injured keeper Clark at half-time with Ross Stewart, while Neilson also brought on Barrie McKay for Orestis Kiomourtzoglu in an attempt to bring his team to life.
McKenzie had already been having a war of words with the referee following a yellow card shown to the Killie captain. Following a VAR check, the player was shown a straight red for serious foul play, leaving his team with 30 minutes still to play with 10 men.
This became a bruising battle of survival for Killie as Hearts threw men forward. Yet it turned into another fruitless failure.
‘We have to look at ourselves — we are going through a difficult period at the moment,’ said Neilson. ‘Everyone needs to make sure we do things better. We started the first 20 minutes well, we got the goal, but then losing the penalty seemed to rock us. We need to get back to doing the basics.’