Hearts’ Jamie Walker takes disappointment on chin

Jamie Walker: Form no consolation. Picture: Jane Barlow

He accepted that defeat was a serious blow in his club’s bid to climb off the bottom of the table, but insisted that no-one at Tynecastle would allow himself to wallow in disappointment.

“Obviously I’m always looking to play well, but that was a massive defeat for us and everyone’s gutted,” Walker said. “But we can’t let our heads down – we just need to keep going.

“The fans were great again, and we were up for the game as well. We actually started very well – probably the best we’ve started for a while. We just fell away and the second half wasn’t great.

“Everyone knows we’re a young team. We can’t really use that as an excuse: we have to do better than what we did on Saturday. But we’ll keep our heads up and go again.

“We think we’ve been hard done by with a few decisions as well, but we’ll just need to take that on the chin and keep working hard.

“And we need to play better than we did against St Mirren, start winning and get a few points on the board again.”

St Mirren have done exactly that, taking three points for the first time this season just five days after a creditable draw with Aberdeen.

Full-back Sean Kelly, who kept his place on Saturday despite the availability of former Hearts player Danny Grainger after suspension, insisted that his team had not lost faith in themselves even when results had been going against them.

“We had the belief in ourselves that we could turn it around,” he said. “We just had to stay compact in a game and keep a clean sheet.

“We knew we were conceding far too many easy goals. But this is only one game and there are plenty more to come.

“We have kept things low-key in the dressing-room. Obviously, we all knew how big a game it was, but we always felt we would use this place to our advantage.

“Monday night obviously gave us a confidence boost, but I wouldn’t say we were too downhearted earlier. We knew it would only take one result to help turn things around. This is only one win and it could quite easily reverse again, so we have to stay focused.

“We can possibly start to look upwards. This three points takes us further away from Hearts but it only takes a set of results after the international break to [put us] back where we were before. We have to try and build a bit of momentum.”