LASZLO BLAMES REF FOR HEARTS DEFEAT

Jambos stopper Marius Zaliuska and Falkirk’s Scott Arfield were both red carded and seven others were booked as the Bairns recorded their first win at Tynecastle since April 1995.

This explosive tie turned in two frantic minutes in the second half when all hell broke loose and all three officials ended up with the spotlight firmly on them.

Hearts claimed they were robbed when standside linesman Martin Cryans kept his flag down as Falkirk opened the scoring.

Lee Bullen’s free-kick was headed out by Zaliukas and as the Hearts defence pushed out Jackie McNamara dinked the ball back into the danger area.

Jambos’ hands went up to claim offside, but Bairns hitman Stevie Lovell charged in unmarked to send a looping header over the stranded Janos Balogh.

The ball crashed off the underside of the crossbar and crept over the line.

But with Hearts players, led by skipper Robbie Neilson, furiously protesting, ref McDonald let the goal stand.

Before the Jambos had cleared their heads, Falkirk had the ball in the net again when another McNamara pass picked out Michael Higdon who beat Balogh.

However this time Cryans did raise his flag for offside as Tynecastle turned into an X-certificate zone.

Ref McDonald’s head was clearly still spinning when Hearts quickly went up the park 90 seconds later and yet more controversy erupted.

Andy Driver pushed the ball past Holden, who slid into a tackle which sent the Hearts winger crashing to the turf.

It was a close call as Holden appeared to nick the ball before he caught his opponent. But McDonald swiftly blew for a penalty and pointed to the spot.

That prompted an amazing chase by furious Falkirk players, led by Steven Pressley, who insisted the ref had got it wrong.

As bedlam broke out around Tynecastle, it would have been easy fo the ref to take the ‘safe’ option to give Hearts a chance to even up the Bairns’ controversial opener.

Instead, McDonald took a deep breath and headed for linesman Chris Young.

Then with 10,000 baying Jambos screaming abuse at him, he changed his decision and awarded a corner!

Hearts boss Csaba Laszlo struggled to find the words he wanted to slaughter McDonald — without earning an SFA ban. He raged: “In this interview I would tell you what I think, but I don’t want to lose my licence.

“The key point was definitely the bad decision which led to their goal.

“Up until then they didn’t have any chances. They had no shots on goal, they just tried to destroy the game. But it’s not only that. The penalty decision was also a problem for me.

“I’ve seen the pictures of their goal and it’s clear we don’t have offsides any more.

“For the penalty, I don’t know if it was a penalty or not. But if you give a penalty? Otherwise, every five minutes you could give a penalty and every five minutes you could cancel it!”

Yet Holden, the man at the centre of the penalty controversy reckoned the whistler showed balls of steel to stand up to the boo-boys.

He said: “I applaud the referee for reversing his decision on the say-so of the linesman.

“It took a lot of balls to be fair to him. I was unsure to be honest.

“I think I maybe got a bit of the ball, but you’re always risking it when you take a chance like that in the penalty box.

“People are quick to criticise but whether the decision was right or not, I won’t know until I see it on TV. I’m a bit unsure to be honest, I don’t know if I got the ball or not.

“As soon as he gave the penalty I was disappointed in myself for making the challenge.

“But he’s made the decision — hopefully it’s the right one.

“The same thing happened to me in reverse against Hibs last year when I made a good challenge and the linesman overturned the ref and gave a penalty.

“I was disappointed in that one, so it’s good to know it can work both ways.”

Even new Jambos skipper Robbie Neilson admitted it took guts for McDonald to reverse his initial penalty decision.

He said: “It was 50-50. If it gets given against you you’d be disappointed, but fair play to the linesman for having the bottle to stand up and decide it wasn’t a penalty.

“However we had chances in the first half, we didn’t take, so we can’t start blaming people for not winning.”

But the Hearts skipper was raging at Falkirk’s winner.

He added: “I thought it was offside and it’s one of those when you hope the ref or linesman makes the decision. But he’s let us down.

“I’ve seen it on the video analysis and to me it looks offside. On the TV pictures you can’t really tell. But we’ve got a guy who videos it and I think he’s offside.

“It was closer than I thought it was. I thought he was three or four yards offside, but it was only half a yard.

“But half a yard, 10 yards, it doesn’t matter. If you’re offside you’re offside. We didn’t get the decision, but it all harks back to not scoring goals and that’s been a problem for us.”

There was more plenty more controversy to come however in this thud and blunder cup tie.

Lithuanian bad boy Zaliukas was stupidly sent off following a tussle with Falkirk sub Carl Finnigan after 83 minutes.

Both players appeared to tug at each other as they chased a through ball but as Zaliukas tumbled he aimed a punch at his opponent, then followed it up with a sly kick at Finnigan.

McDonald pulled out his red card and Bairns kid Scott Arfield followed Zaliukas up the tunnel in injury time when he picked up a second yellow for a foul on David Obua to leave both sides with 10 men.

HEARTS: Balogh, Neilson, Zaliukas, Karipidis, Lee Wallace, Obua, Aguiar, Stewart, Driver, Glen (Elliot 66), Jonsson (Kingston 61). Subs not used: Kello, Thomson, Mrowiec.

FALKIRK: Dani Mallo, Bullen, Pressley, Barr, McNamara (Cregg 87), Arfield, Riera (Finnigan 56), McCann (O’Brien 87), Holden, Lovell, Higdon. Subs not used: Olejnik, Stewart.