Berry can now afford to look on the bright side

JIM REYNOLDS

31 Aug 1992

NEIL Berry emerged at the weekend from a wilderness of doubt, despair, and dread to give Hearts a 1-0 win over Motherwell at Tynecastle and himself a huge boost for the future.

It was the midfield player's first full 90 minutes at the top level for 18 months and at last he can afford to look on the bright side of footballing life.

Berry had been out of the picture after a serious cruciate ligament injury and there were times during the past year or so when he wondered if he would ever make it back.

"It was soul destroying coming in every day for months on end and going into the physio's room," said the 29-year-old.

"There were times when I thought I would never get back and it was difficult trying to motivate myself.

But I did that with a lot of help from Craig Levein who suffered a similar experience.

He talked me through the various stages of recovery when I was having doubts and I am grateful to him for that.

"Now I don't think about the injury when I go whacking into a tackle -- only afterwards when I realise I've done it and my knee has stood up to it.

My aim now is to work at staying in the first team and that will be difficult because there are several players competing for the midfield roles at Tynecastle.

"I owe it to the club to help make that competition all the stronger because Hearts were very good to me during the bad times.

They looked after me financially and even sent me on a family holiday to Ibiza."

Berry started paying off the debt on Saturday when he grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck at a time when Hearts were not doing so well.

Five minutes from half-time Wayne Foster cut in from the left and when he pushed the ball back to the edge of the box Berry hit a magnificent drive low past Billy Thomson.

It was the Tynecastle side's first effort on target and was to prove most valuable at the end of the day.

Berry does not score very often.

That was only his tenth goal since joining the club from Bolton in 1984 but Motherwell must hate the sight of the big fellow.

Four of his goals have been against them.

And here is another little statistic -- Hearts have never lost a match in which Neil Berry has scored.

They could so easily have lost this one, however.

Motherwell were more direct, especially in the first half, had more shots on target, and hit the bar twice.

"We were far superior in every department except finishing," said manager Tommy McLean.

"We normally get a doing here but not this time.

"Although our defence looked more secure than it has been since the start of the season, I'm annoyed at the way we lost the goal.

It's the third time in recent weeks someone has scored against us from the edge of the box without any of our players putting him under pressure."

Hearts manager, Joe Jordan, admitted that his side did not play particularly well but feels they need only a little confidence to get themselves going.

He said: "We keep ourselves under pressure by not taking just one more chance.

At 1-0 you just can't afford to relax.

We certainly had enough chances in the second half to finish this game."

The man was quite right.

When Hearts began to get in behind the Motherwell defence they sent some tantalising quality balls across the face of the goal but nobody managed to get on the end of them.

"When we start cashing in on those kind of chances our confidence will come," said Jordan.

Taken from the Herald