10/02/2025 – HEARTS (H)

Our Scottish Cup adventure is sadly over for another season, and it must be conceded that a massive opportunity to advance to the latter stages of the competition has been missed.

The draw was reasonably favourable to Saints, with a home tie against Hearts, who of course we had already beaten at Greenhill Road earlier in the season, and the fixture was shifted to the Monday evening for TV purposes.

This decision ultimately affected attendance by around 2,000 home spectators, with the temptation of staying in the house probably amplified by the bitterly cold conditions, however Saints defied the freeze by starting the match very strongly.

For almost the entire first half we dominated, creating multiple opportunities as Toyosi Olusanya, and the standout player on the pitch, Mikael Mandron, caused Hearts all sorts of issues.

One of our biggest failures this season has been not taking advantage when dominating at home, but we bucked the trend on this occasion when big Mikka continued his impressive 2025 goalscoring form by notching his third in as many matches on 23 minutes, the very least Saints deserved even this early in the match.

Toyosi Olusanya, however, had left his shooting boots at home, and despite causing havoc in the Hearts ranks with his frankly terrifying pace, our top scorer missed chance after chance to add to his impressive 11 goals this season.

Saints control of the match continued into the second period, and with this pressure, the missed chances stacked up even further, with Toyosi and Killian Phillips missing two excellent opportunities. After an hour, understandably, Saints began to tire but Hearts in truth provided little threat.

At this point in the game, most Saints fans probably had the same thoughts. Will we regret not taking these chances, and will our fragility and nervousness late in matches cause us once more to throw away results?

With 5 minutes remaining we got our answer. In a rare Hearts attack, Saints needlessly gave away possession in our own penalty box and following a couple of attempts to clear, the ball fell kindly for Calum Nieuwenhof, who poked the ball past Zach Hemming to level the match.

It was yet another late and soft goal conceded by us, and depressingly predictable in truth.

From here, the depth of each squad was tested to the maximum as another 30 minutes were now going to being played. Hearts undoubtedly now had the advantage, with Saints missing Tanser, McMenamin and Ayunga from an already small squad.

With that said, the visitors still didn’t put us under any real sustained pressure and Zach Hemming dealt competently with anything that came his way, however it was now obvious penalty kicks was going to decide the match.

Considering our record from the penalty spot this season, this was the equivalent of a blind man being entered into an “I spy” competition and confidence wasn’t exactly high going into the shootout.

In fact, the atmosphere was very flat and the overwhelming expectation seemed to be that we were going to fail. This is not a criticism of the support, as having missed 4 penalties already this season, it was a natural reaction.

The instincts of the support were spot on, and rather predictably Saints missed their first two penalties through Smyth and Scott.

Hemming gave Saints a brief reprieve by saving Hearts third effort, allowing young Evan Mooney and then Marcus Fraser to find the net, but our fate was sealed by James Penrice with Hearts final kick, and our Scottish Cup dreams extinguished for another season.

The overall feeling at the end of the match was that of a self-inflicted defeat. The team didn’t play badly. In fact, during the regulation 90 minutes, we played well with several players putting in good performances.

In any other year, we would have been going to Tynecastle for a replay allowing us a chance to regroup and perhaps get more players available from injury, but the recent change in rules meant extra-time was played and our own squad issues from earlier in the season and unavailability really caught up with us.

None of this would have mattered of course, if we had taken just one more of our numerous chances created, especially in the first half.

However, we can take heart from the various periods of good play and performance for a large part of the regulation 90 mins.

Additionally, we now know that Marcus Fraser can score penalties, and as he plays almost every minute of every match, maybe this issue is closer to being resolved.

As for the Scottish Cup, see you in 2026.

COYS!!

Hearts Players of the Match:

5 points – Mikael Mandron

3 points – Marcus Fraser

1 point – Zach Hemming

Check our the Player of the Season race here –

PLAYER OF THE SEASON