McCulloch 25
Main 35, 45
Match Information
Attendance: 30,000
Referee: Peter Craigmyle (Aberdeen)
Matchday: Wednesday
Match Trivia
Rangers won another game by a one-goal margin last night. The Light Blues luck holds. Hearts at stages excelled the home lot, but goals count. There were times when the fellows in maroon should have made victory certain. There were times when Rangers should have added to their 2-1 score. But there it is victory to the team who got the ball most often in the net! Hearts skipper, full-back Anderson, took advantage of the spin of the coin and played with a sun that almost blinded Rangers. Yet Jimmy Fleming came within an inch of scoring a chancy goal in the first half-minute. Harkness had to dive and dive slick to stop that weird ball. Distinctly, in the next quarter of an hour, Hearts controlled the game. Walker, McCulloch, and left-winger Robertson kept the Light Blue defence on the stretch. Tet shot after shot was either saved confidently by Dawson or went just past much to the keepers relief. Walker missed a glorious chance when he got his boot under the ball when a drag-shot would probably have beaten Dawson all ends up. Ober the bar doesnt count in soccer! Robertson made a wretched mess of another chance. Hearts should have been happy just about that time. Then the Rangers pressure with Nicholson forcing corners, and Fleming and Macaulay and Main striving to send Harkness ball-picking in the back of the net. Woefully insipid it was till Hearts did the trick. Twenty-five minutes had gone when R Johnstone bamboozled the Rangers left-flank defence and swept over a ball that McCulloch brilliantly turned past Dawson. A great goal and thoroughly merited! Rangers equaliser, though scored by Main on the run with an unsaveable shot, should really be credited to Macaulay. The game inside-right disregarded Herds tackle, travelled on, prodded the ball to Main at the right moment, and so made scoring possible. A Nicholson shot would have done the trick before the interval but for a brilliant finger-tip save by Harkness, but next minute Main took a header-chance as Jack rushed impetuously out to a long lob. Harkness was definitely at fault. Rangers were as dominant in the first quarter of the second half as Hearts had been in their best spell of the first period. But never a reasonably acceptable ball went to Fleming. It was left to Macaulay to stir the blood with a low shot that went narrowly past; and to Main, after a spot pf pressure that was worth more than a fierce drive over the bar. Jerry Dawson was happy when Whitey McDonald passed back just to keep his keeper warm, so to speak. McCulloch had hard luck when he shot over in the characteristic John White style. Bob McPhail went off for a minute. A throw by Meiklejohn to Macaulay, a back pass, a cross, a header by McPhail and then a Harkness touch over the bar. Just about the best movement of the game but not a goal! Even Fleming with a gilt-edged chance, could do no more than hit Jack Harkness knees when the omens pointed to a flashing ball at the back of the net. And even Main could do no better than hit the angle of the post and bar with a fierce shot.
