STRACH'S JOY SHOWS HOW HE RATES US

HEARTS suffered the ultimate football sickener last Saturday with Celtic's last-minute winner against us.

You could see from Gordon Strachan's wild celebrations how much the victory meant to the Celtic boss. And it occurred to me later that this was a big compliment to us.

To my mind, Celtic v Hearts clashes have become almost as big as Old Firm encounters.

Celtic now see Hearts as a major rival for the SPL Championship. That is why Strachan celebrated the way he did at the end of last Saturday's game and, for me, he was showing respect to Hearts which I am extremely pleased with.

I am not having a dig at Celtic or their management.

Celtic were entitled to celebrate in whatever way they saw fit after winning the game in the most dramatic circumstances.

We would have celebrated, too, if we had scored in the dying seconds, although we might not have done it so wildly.

If you win such an important game you can do what you want and Celtic's joy was clear for all to see.

I think they had settled for a point in their minds and were probably overcome by a mixture of relief and disbelief that they clinched all three.

For us to lose to a last-minute goal after being the better team was extremely hard to take.

To take nothing from the game was galling for the players who had put in so much effort.

It is up to us to reproduce the form we showed at Parkhead on a more consistentbasis.

We played magnificently in a game pivotal in terms of the championship.

There is still along way to go but we have to wonder if we have given Celtic too much of a lead to catch them in the title race.

With less than five minutes to go, it looked as if we had reduced the gap at the top of the table to seven points but now it is 13.

It is a massive ask of any team for them to try to overhaul one of the Old Firm when they have such a healthy lead at the top of the pile.

That six-point swing within a matter of minutes could prove decisive. There is a massive difference between a seven-point lead and a 13-pointone.

But we will have to plug away and try to get some consistency while hoping other teams can take points of Celtic. We will also have to do that in our remaining games against them.

Celtic scored from two set-pieces andI feltwe could have defended them better.

There is still loads to play for but Celtic have that bit of quality and even when the performance is average they can still pick up points when it matters most.

We can take a lot of positives from our performance. We played with a purpose and, with our pace up front, posed a real threat against a very good side.

We played some great football on the counter attack and created as many chances as we have at Park head in a longtime.

Now we have a cracker of a CIS Insurance Cup quarterfinal against Hibs tonight.

It isn't that long since we turned in a tremendous performance against them at Easter Road, rallying from 2-0 down to gain a creditable draw even though we had been reduced to 10men.

We are a big team who won silverware in the shape of the Scottish Cup last season.

That is the kind of feeling we want to experience again. No disrespect to Hibs but we are desperate for more trophy success. Winning cups is a habit we want to get into.

We want to be back at Hampden in the semi-finals and it just so happens that Hibs stand in our way of doing that. We want to try to make sure the gap between trophy wins at this club is not as big as the last one when we won the Scottish Cup in 1998 and didn't do it again until this year.

In any cup tie it is all about getting through and in this derby all that matters is reaching the semi-finals.

No team ever looks back and says they were rubbish in a previous round of acup competition.

It does not matter if you win ugly or win beautiful, especially from our point of view, in a cup-tie with Hibs.

As long as we win through in the end and our name is in the draw for last four, that will do me.

As told to Anthony Haggerty

Taken from the Daily Record