Hearts 4
Clydebank 1
League (Division 1)

Match Report

Most of the Clydebank team were still throwing rusks at their mums and dads when Sandy Jardine first played for Rangers.

Yet here he was making even Jim Fallon seem young, but running around like a teenager and even scoring a late penalty kick

he watched with experienced eyes as Bankies weaved pretty patterns across the greasy Tynecastle turf, then stepped in when danger was near to set his team going forward. He used his brain, saved his legs and was absolutely outstanding.

And that more than anything else is why Clydebank and most of the First Division seem likely to suffer at the hands of a Hearts team a million miles from the blundering muscle-bound side which missed promotion last season.

Bankies, like Hearts, played lovely football, and for 24 minutes looked in charge of the situation. But then they pushed their luck too far.

Knocking the ball around the back four, pulling things down and looking for an opening it all looked so good until of all people, Jim Fallon hit a pass which I had as much chance of getting as Tony Gervaise.

Birthday boy Willie Pettigrew - 29 on Wednesday - accepted the present and raced through to beat Jim Gallacher.

Clydebank were as good as dead when Derek O'Connor shot into an empty net after a good deal of what might politely be called messing about in the Clydebank defence.

Paddy Byrne made it three after the break. Roddy MacDonald beat Gallacher to a corner and as Bankies dithered the Irishman hammered home the killer goal.

It was a killer because shortly before it, Gerry Ronald - after Jardine, the game's best player headed home a Bobby Williamson corner to breathe life into his team.

But Hearts never really looked in danger from a Clydebank side which seemed to accept the inevitability of defeat far too early.

Jim Gallacher was a busy man as the home defence gave his defence a roasting. And the keeper obviously feeling like a young thing after seeing the likes of Jardine and Willie Johnston, pulled off some acrobatic stops.

I nipped out to the toilet just in time to miss the fourth goal, but the woman along the row saw it and I'm reliably informed that the man in the green shirt tripped the man in the maroon shirt and the other man in the maroon shirt kicked it in the goal.

John Motson, eat your heart out!