Docherty’s Dees Delight And Break Hearts At Dens Park

Docherty’s Dees surged into a 3-0 lead by half-time. Despite a resurgence from Hearts in the second half, Dundee held on for a 3-1 victory.

Scott Tiffoney opened the scoring after a poor clearance from Hearts’ Zander Clark. Gerald Taylor scored an own goal in stoppage time, and moments later, Frankie Kent fouled Tiffoney to concede a penalty, which Luke McCowan converted from the spot. The Dark Blues seemed to extend their lead to 4-0 just after the break, but Lyall Cameron’s goal was disallowed due to a handball by Mo Sylla during the build-up.

Frankie Kent later made amends for the penalty incident by scoring from close range, but Hearts never appeared to mount a comeback, as they had twice last season.

Reflecting on his side's win, manager Tony Docherty expressed his delight with the team’s performance against a strong Hearts side:

“It was a really strong performance, and it had to be against a very, very good Hearts team. We had watched them the previous week put in a fantastic performance against Rangers, so I’m really pleased with the overall team performance.”

He added:

“It's probably one of the best we've had since I've been here. To take a justified three-nothing lead at half-time was great, and the thing that pleased me most was even in the second half when Hearts really threw everything at us, we held on. Last season, we came in for a little bit of justified criticism because we surrendered a few leads.”

“With the squad that I've got now, once we went into that position, I didn't feel any pressure at all that we were going to lose the game. So, credit to the team; I thought it was a really strong team performance.”

Looking ahead, Docherty remarked:

“But we move on from that. We've looked at the game, we've looked at what we've done well, and we've looked at things we can also do better. But now it's about moving on to the next game, which is a cup competition against Airdrie.”

The Dark Blues face Airdrie this weekend in the last 16 of the Premier Sports Cup at Dens Park.