Little interest in share issue

HEARTS 0 ABERDEEN 0 Subs: Janczyk for Simmons 45, Sloan for Twaddle 52, Wales for Weir 83.

Not used: Gordon, MacFarlane.

Referee: D McDonald.

Subs: Thornley for Fabiano 16.

Not used: Preece, Hedderman, Payne, Billio.

Booked: McGuire 52, Deloumeaux 55, Mike 57, McAllister 79.

Attendance: 11,920.

AN entertaining half-time interval was sandwiched by a football match. Phil Stamp emerged from the tunnel for an on-field interview amusingly drowned out by the clamour of Hearts supporters lustily chanting his name for sticking it to Hibs six days earlier. Then a tannoy message was played for a fan attending his final game of the season before emigrating to the Bahamas. He should have left on Friday.

The interval illuminated a match which travelled fast but went nowhere. Neither side deserved a victory and they barely created a worthwhile chance between them. Even the number of absent players seemed equally shared.

"Between us we probably had 12 to 14 players out," said the Hearts manager, Craig Levein, in mitigation. All the factors which left the sides inseparable would be inconsequential were it not for the fact they meet again in a CIS Cup quarter-final at Pittodrie on Tuesday. If play is as incon-clusive as it was here, they'll both still be firing penalties over the crossbar as dawn breaks.

In his three years in Scottish football Ebbe Skovdahl had known nothing but defeat from all his visits to Tynecastle so at the end of yesterday's sorry play he could claim some sort of footnote in his management history.

Aberdeen leaving the place with a point was as uncharacteristic as the nature of the match itself. Tynecastle is a claustrophobic, suffocating stadium which might have been custom built to generate a stirring atmosphere on Hearts' behalf. Having the crowd breathing down their necks almost always stirs players from both sides into performances which may lack finesse but are rarely devoid of energy. Yesterday saw the curiosity of a match here which lacked the ground's usual fizz.

The managers were more successful than the players. Levein and Skovdahl could last night feel content that the organisation and shape that they had chosen for their teams had been vindicated. That there were so few opportun-ities, and no goals, was the players' fault.

"It is difficult to feel too disappointed," said Levein, whose side remain third in the table. "We've had a lot of injury problems going into the match. Our young players worked hard but we probably lacked a bit of quality, especially in the last third. But the boys did their best, that's all anybody could ask of them."

Notwithstanding that their efforts genuinely were undermined by a flu virus before the game, Aberdeen had been outclassed while conceding seven goals at Celtic Park a week ago. Their immeasurably improved overall performance yesterday spoke not only of their recovered health but, once more, of the demoralising gulf between the Old Firm and Scotland's next best side. Aberdeen may have been as culpable as Hearts in failing to play with any great imagination yesterday, but they were never made to feel uncomfortable or out of their depth.

A large and voluble travelling support helped them settle, but the match, too, was to their liking. Neither side was able to control play and possession was exchanged so frequently that even the players who failed to play never drifted into anonymity.

Hearts were without both their first-choice strikers, Mark de Vries and Andy Kirk, and resorted to flinging free-kicks into the penalty area in the belief - well-founded - that Kevin McKenna would win balls in the air against Kevin Rutkiewciz. McKenna obliged with two headers which forced comfortable saves from Peter Kjaer, and a back-post nod which returned the ball across the area for Kevin Twaddle to turn and scoop a shot over the crossbar.

Twaddle had started his first match for the club since joining from Motherwell in the summer and his contribution was to generate an unfortunate talking point after the match. One supporter's tolerance of him snapped before half-time. "Hey Levein, get Twaddle off, he's crap."

It was Stephen Simmons who was replaced first, succumbing to a groin strain at half-time to be replaced by Neil Janczyk, but Twaddle survived only seven second-half minutes and the band of critics swelled within the stands.

Levein was disappointed to hear some Hearts supporters jeering Twaddle as he came off. "From my point of view the lad's a Hearts player, he's wearing a Hearts jersey and deserves their support. I don't care if he's had a bad game, a stinker or four stinkers in a row. The lad's lacking confidence and has hardly played this season. He's a Hearts supporter and has been since he was a boy. It is having an adverse effect on him.

"He's nervous before games and it's harming his game. It's a small minority that's criticising him but they have to remember that these boys are all wearing Hearts jerseys." Levein's admir-able comments were those of manager comfortable enough in his job to say things from which others would shirk.

The game's first substitution had passed without note. A groin strain had removed Nicolas Fabiano after barely quarter of an hour. The Frenchman did not think much of the idea of carrying on despite some initial scepticism from his own bench about the seriousness of his injury, but made way for Ben Thornley. Thornley ensured Aberdeen's attack retained its width but he was to prove unable to do any more with all the possession that his midfielders won in the centre of the park.

Aberdeen went into the match having scored eight away goals and only five at home in the league, and the side lacks a player with the flair and imagination of Jean-Louis Valois, who always seemed the most likely supplier of ammunition for McKenna in the Hearts forward line.

Aberdeen accumulated four second-half bookings, and some frantic late play teased supporters with the prospect of a winner. In the end, though, Levein was the only one who found it difficult to feel disappointed.

Copyright 2002
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