Caley take high road to conquer new peak

Hearts 1 Wales (45)
Inverness CT 3 Tokely (26), Wyness (57), Bagan (73)

WAS this 3-1 win better than that 3-1 win? How did Inverness Caley Thistle’s shock triumph against Hearts measure up against their stunning success against Celtic, also in the Scottish Cup, two years ago? Frankly, who cares?

Not the Inverness players, most of whom seemed surprised by the eventual comfort with which they eased into the quarter-finals. Not the massive visiting support, roughly double the number who turn up for their home games. And not the Hearts team, whose sole concern was the fact that they had played badly and got what they deserved.

In wider, public-awareness terms, this result may not have had quite the stature of super Caley’s celebrated triumph over Celtic, but it was still an achievement of some magnitude.

Just because K2 is smaller than Everest does not mean it should be ignored.

Indeed, while beating Celtic will always cause more shock waves, just because the Glasgow side are a bigger club than Hearts, in some ways - just in case you want an answer to the opening question - Saturday’s 3-1 win was better. After all, in February 2000 Celtic were in disarray: nearly two years on, the Hearts squad have pulled together well under their manager, Craig Levein.

Remarkably, given that they have lost half a dozen first-choice players since that historic victory in Glasgow, Inverress played with an unflappable maturity at Tynecastle.

One would expect no less of experienced men such as their captain Bobby Mann, the shaven-headed centre-back who looks more like a carcase-renderer than an athlete, but the patience and calmness was seen throughout the team.

Only on the stroke of half-time, when Gary Wales had cancelled out Ross Tokely’s opening goal, did Inverness look at all groggy, and by the time they re-emerged for the second half their composure was back.

Even on a heavily sanded pitch unconducive to their intricate passing game, Hearts really should have been able to build on that equaliser and take command. But, with Ricardo Fuller shackled by man-marker Stuart McCaffrey, and Mann and Grant Munro taking care of the other defensive duties, the SPL side could offer little real menace.

Once Dennis Wyness restored the visitors’ lead ten minutes into the second period, Hearts were forced to press on, leaving themselves open to the counter-attack. What is more, with the visitors defending in numbers, Fuller was unable to exploit his natural game of picking the ball up from deep and running head-on at defences.

When David Bagan, a half-time substitute for Charlie Christie, picked up a clearance, beat Tommi Gronlund twice and scored the third, the game was up for Hearts.

Even a consolation strike was beyond them, and it is now debatable whether the rest of the season will offer any other sort of consolation to them.

The official line is that the battle for third place is still on. A look at the league table shows the battle for a top-six slot must be fought and won first, and a glance at Hearts’ results against Livingston this season - played three, lost three - suggests that fourth or fifth place is plausible, but third is improbable.

Levein’s team have supposedly come into a bit of form of late, but this defeat follows two more in the league, so it would be wrong to think they went into this game at anything like their best. In mitigation, they were always going to struggle at the back during the absence on international duty of Canadian Kevin McKenna, and the loss of Steven Pressley with a virus hit them hard in this match, too.

But injuries will always be with us, and Levein, while accepting Pressley’s absence did his team no favours, refused to look for excuses.

"It wasn’t just one thing that went wrong," he said. "The strikers didn’t do as well as they have been doing, we were second to most balls in the middle of the park, and we defended poorly. When you put these things together, a win’s not too likely.

"We played some nice passing moves and kept the ball for spells, but all that did was allow Inverness to get behind the ball again. They deserved to win. We’re not a good enough side to play at half-cock. We’re not talented enough."

A couple of weeks back, when he and Fuller were named manager and player of the month for December, Levein warned against the tendency to read too much into a couple of results. The "crisis club" label should not be glued on after two or three defeats, the manager suggested; nor should a short, undefeated run be regarded as a full-scale renaissance.

That warning seems apt now. Like six or seven other sides in their division, Hearts are capable of putting a good run together, but there is still an underlying fragility. Livingston’s ability to put a good season together is commendable, but it probably says as much about the teams below them in the SPL as it does about the third-placed side themselves.

The shallowness of most SPL squads, and the continuing financial restraints upon managers, mean the gap between the top flight and the First Division is easily bridged on one-off occasions such as this.

Mind you, Inverness have their own budgetary worries, and Bagan, for one, could be off in the summer unless money can be found from somewhere.

Perhaps Tokely’s father could help. A former trialist at Tynecastle, the Aberdonian revealed that his dad had put £20 on him at 25-1 to score the first goal. "Conceding the equaliser took the stuffing out of us," Tokely added, "but then we got the goals in the second half and I was a bit surprised they didn’t come back at us a bit more."

Having scored the opener in the CIS Cup last eight against Ayr, then seen his team go on to lose 5-1 after he was sent off, Tokely hoped his goal here - a well-struck drive after Austin McCann failed to clear - would be seen as compensation.

If Tokely still seemed awestruck by the result, Mann was calmness personified after the game .

"We ran out comfortable winners, and dug in really well," the captain said. "It was a no-lose situation for us, coming to an SPL club. Obviously Celtic are a bigger club than Hearts, but Hearts are going well just now, so it was great to come down here and beat them."

Mann had hoped to meet Rangers, the team he supports, in the last eight, but his manager, Steve Paterson, will prefer the principle that if you want to go as far as possible in the competition, a draw against a team from their own division would suit him better.

As the draw has pitted his club against the winners of the Partick-Dundee replay, Paterson is halfway to having his wish come true. If he stops to consider his team’s form for a moment, though, the manager may just find a visit to Dens Park would be the less pressurised option. Certainly, after disposing so comprehensively of Hearts, his team would hardly feel Dundee represented another mountain to climb.

Referee: A Freeland. Attendance: 12,016.

Taken from the Scotsman