Hearts: Zaliukas puts out a contract on the Cup

MARIUS Zaliukas will be greeted by an empty Wheatfield Stand when he leads Hearts out at Tynecastle for tomorrow's Scottish Cup tie with St Johnstone. He would be forgiven if a shiver runs down his spine at the sight, for he has endured enough soulless moments in stands to last a lifetime.

The club captain spent several painful weeks as a spectator during his ostracising from first-team duty for refusing to sign a new contract. By his own admission, it drove him close to insanity. With the contract issue resolved, there will be no-one more grateful than Zaliukas to be on the pitch as Hearts begin their Scottish Cup campaign.

"It was killing me that I couldn't play. Now everything is resolved and I am here to do my job. I am happy with that," he said. "Playing is my life. If I couldn't play I would probably go crazy. It was really hard being out because everyone wants to play as much as possible.

"When you have to sit in the stand it is really difficult. Training doesn't feel that way because you forget things and you are playing with the lads. Jim (Jefferies) was positive to me, he didn't put me in the reserves or the second squad. It was just the weekends. In the stand you can see all the mistakes, everything. It is different. But it can happen to anyone, losing goals."

Zaliukas admitted that, at the height of the impasse between himself and Hearts' majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov, he began to wonder if he would ever again don a maroon shirt. "Yes, maybe for a couple of weeks. We didn't speak enough with Romanov or Sergey. After we resolved everything and I think everyone is happy."

Happy is indeed a pertinent description of the atmosphere at Riccarton right now with Hearts mounting a genuine challenge to the Old Firm's duopoly of Scottish football. The Wheatfield will officially be closed due to a dispute between Hearts and St Johnstone over ticket pricing but it will take more than an empty stand to unsettle the Tynecastle players.

Their SPL run is indicative of a side on full throttle and consequently the additional challenge of trying to build a cup run is warmly welcomed.

"Tomorrow is like a regular game that we want to win to continue our run," said Zaliukas. "Obviously we have a very young squad but a trophy could change a lot of players' lives." Not least that of the Lithuanian himself. Should he achieve the honour of captaining Hearts to cup success, he would join legends like Steven Pressley, Gary Locke and Freddie Glidden in club folklore.

"Oh, no. Not a legend. Maybe one day it would be nice," he laughed. "For now we just focus on the weekend's game and winning. I've seen the pictures and videos (of previous cup wins).

"It would be a very good feeling and probably everyone wants that. Everyone is good enough, you just need a good team spirit like we have now."

That spirit is carrying Hearts forward in pursuit of a league title for the first time in five years. "Maybe it's too early to say something," continued Zaliukas. "I heard the former Hibs manager, (John) Collins, say on television that we need another run like this and then we can say that we can split the Old Firm. Now it's too early.

"We are keeping clean sheets and we want to do that every single week. As defenders it's our job to keep a clean sheet. We have good communication between each other. All the team deserves credit for the team work. After the run that we are on now, everyone is happy. We just want to keep going."

Jefferies was manager when Hearts won the 1998 Scottish Cup and watched closely as the 2006 side emulated that success. He challenged the current group to realise their potential by reaching the same elevated platform. "That's two good teams to be compared with. These teams won the , so that's the challenge for this team. Try and have a good cup run and try and go all the way.

"We need to go into it with the same attitude and will that we've shown recently. The good thing about a run like this is you want to keep it going. But the longer it goes on the more it fires up the other team to want to be the that stops you. They're all going to be hard games, and there are some tough games coming round the corner in the league as well. But I don't think we can be any better confidence-wise or belief-wise than we are at the moment.

"Only time will tell if we manage to go and achieve what we set out to achieve. We've said this season we want to be challenging where we think we should be. There's a long way to go, but we're doing that at the moment. And the other objective is to have a really good cup run. And hopefully at the end of that if the breaks and the draws go your way you can get a result.

"We'd still be a good team if we got to the final and didn't win it and were having the season we're having in the league. But that would be the icing on the cake if we could manage to get another trophy. Dundee United won it last year and Ross County were in the final. The cups are the best chance of silverware for any club (outside the Old Firm), even in the divisions below."

Hearts have doubts over Kevin Kyle, Darren Barr, Gary Glen and Ian Black, although medical staff are hopeful striker Stephen Elliott will have recovered from the virus afflicting several members of the squad. Marian Kello's back and Rudi Skacel's calf were due to be assessed today with both of them also in the doubtful category."We've got a strong squad, so I don't think it will diminish us in any way if we have to lose boys, whether we rest them or lose them to injury or illness," said Jefferies. "It's up to the boys who come in to prove we've got a strong squad. I would think if I was a player that hadn't been in the team recently and got a chance, I would be pulling out all the stops to help the team keep that run."

Jefferies conceded that his players should be able to adjust to a lack of atmosphere with Tynecastle's biggest stand closed. "It's not ideal. I think at the time of the year it was a perfectly reasonably suggestion (to cut prices], but St Johnstone wanted the full price and that's their right.

"We've just got to deal with it. We've got to look at the form we're in and say it doesn't matter what the atmosphere will be. If we perform how we've done lately we'll give St Johnstone a tough time. We know that on their day they can cause anybody problems, and we know that we'll have to be at our best to go through, irrespective of what the atmosphere is."