Hearts suffer panic in streets of Pilton: Spartans do themselves proud, skylight spectator, Craig Gordon return and late winner

Kent strikes late as visitors made to suffer before reaching last 16

Spartans might have been denied a reward in a sporting context for the admirable decision to stage this tie at their own stadium. However, they received the respect of the Scottish football community while also coming seconds away from forcing a bonus 30 minutes of Scottish Cup action at Ainslie Park – and then who knows?

As well as credit for staging a second-half comeback, Spartans gained £60,000 for the club coffers, a sum swollen by revenue from TV and gate receipts from the 3,600 crowd. What they could not quite secure was a result to ring out through the ages, although they came close. Boy did they come close.

Hearts were rocking. Panic in the streets of Pilton. With the tie delicately poised at 1-1 in the latter stages, goalkeeper Craig Gordon, who was making his first appearance since breaking a leg against Dundee United 13 months earlier, came out to safely collect a dangerous-looking cross. Relief was palpable among the away fans standing on the grassy mound behind the goal. Behind them were a row of houses with interested onlookers dotted around windows. There was even someone with their head poking out of a skylight.

Frankie Kent heads home a late winner for Hearts against Spartans.

It was notable that after Hearts scored early, through Kenneth Vargas, the ardour of the occasion dimmed slightly and the skylight viewer disappeared: ‘I wouldn’t watch Hearts if they were playing in my back garden etc etc.' But the enterprising fellow was enticed back as a proper cup tie began to develop. The longer the game progressed with the visitors unable to build on Vargas’ header, you did start to wonder, what if? What if burly centre half Jordan Tapping miscued a header, what if a suspiciously offside-looking Callum Booth – Spartans manager Dougie Samuel later gave praise for the absence of VAR – picked up the loose ball and sclaffed a cross towards the back of the box.

And what if James Craigen, a veteran of several mid-sized and smaller Scottish clubs, hit the sweet spot like never before to volley home past a rooted-to-the-spot Gordon. Well, reader, this is all happened. There were 65 minutes on the clock. Samuel smiled afterwards that the scrappiness of the build-up only magnified the glory of the goal.

Hearts had just sent on 16-year-old James Wilson for his debut in place of Kyosuke Tagawa, who had found this very specific challenge to be a tough one. So too Vargas, who was nearly knocked into the passing traffic on Ferry Road by a shoulder barge from Tapping on the near touchline.

The Costa Rican, to his credit, shook himself down and got on with it. But even Gavin Hastings, who had squeezed his chunky calves into a tight space in row 5 of the main stand, winced. Vargas was in the right place at the right time to nod Hearts into the lead after 13 minutes from Allan Forest’s pinpoint delivery. He was also stopped from putting Hearts two up shortly after half-time by a brave and brilliant block from goalkeeper Blair Carswell, who was, by some distance, the man of the match.

The Spartans players take the acclaim of the players at full-time.

Even the returning Gordon, the man of the moment, had to applaud some of his rival in the opposite goal's stops, although neither won the award for best reflexes. That distinction goes to Hearts chairperson Ann Budge, who was forced to duck quickly on the Spartans club house balcony as a ball ricocheted towards her following a deflection.

Gordon did have his own moment to savour after such a long and often lonely comeback trail. His save to tip Booth’s curling raker over the crossbar after 22 minutes screamed ‘I am back’ and would have made him feel a whole lot better about himself. Prior to this he only had to deal with one passback. Carswell, by contrast, was flinging himself this way and that. He was later seen leaving the club house with a pint in his hand and Gordon’s shirt stuffed in his holdall. The former Hearts academy pupil revealed last week that the Scotland goalkeeper was his idol.

As might be expected, Spartans took their time to settle against a team 32 places above them. They felt their way in and rode their luck at times. Blair Henderson worked tirelessly up front before being replaced after 89 minutes by Sean Brown. Alan Brown came on moments later for his 300th club appearance in a decade of service. “The highlight of the day for me,” said Samuel, and you believed him. “There’s always a bigger narrative.”

The veteran Brown deserved another half an hour. Spartans deserved another half an hour. But while there’s the magic of the cup, and plenty was in evidence here, including the teams being piped on, there’s also the brutal reality. Four minutes after Brown’s introduction, it was all over. A corner and an unmarked opposition centre-half can be a devastating cocktail. Frankie Kent headed in his first goal for Hearts in stoppage time to silence the shrill voices of the Spartans Ultras.

Fans took drastic measures to watch the match. Pic: Lisa Ferguson.

Samuel, the north Edinburgh club's philosopher-manager, has felt like this before. As a player for Whitehill Welfare, for example, when their efforts to secure a shock against Stenhousemuir were undone by on-loan Kenny Miller’s double. “We will do what we do at this level,” he said, back in 1998. “We will go home and dream.” Wise beyond his years then, he maintains such an attractive and deftly articulated outlook. He scoffed at the idea Spartans might have wanted the game played at a bigger stadium such as Easter Road to maximise profits.

"This might sound dramatic but it would have been a crime for us to take it somewhere else," he said afterwards. "We built this home for the community. I am proud of the fact we are authentic and care deeply about the work we do in the community and we care deeply about being a part of the community – because we are a part of it. I am not saying that in a patronising way. We are embedded in this community and proud to have put a smile on this community in the last few weeks - and hopefully today as well with the result."