Alan Forrest hits a Hearts landmark in style - and a European win ranked against a Hibs derby
The winger scored on his 100th appearance for the Edinburgh club against Omonoia
Alan Forrest marked his 100th Hearts appearance with a goal against Omonoia Nicosia and then set his sights on Hibs in Sunday’s Edinburgh derby. The winger scored the opening goal in Thursday night’s 2-0 Conference League win over the Cypriot side as new head coach Neil Critchley enjoyed his second win from two matches in charge.
After Blair Spittal’s shot deflected into his path, Forrest took a touch and dispatched a powerful shot high into the Omonoia net with his weaker left foot. “There’s no better feeling than that,” he said afterwards. “The ball just kind of dropped to me in the box and straight away I just thought: ‘I'm hitting this.’ Luckily, I just caught it sweet and I just saw it fly by the goalie and I was delighted.
“I just treated it like another game. You go into the game and you want to do as best you can to get a goal and assist. Obviously with my [100th] appearance it makes it better. But for me it was just how can I impact the game and luckily I've been able to do so.
“When the ball came to me, I've not had much time to think about it. Obviously I would rather it was on my right-hand side in the box, but the way it just came to me, that's probably a good thing that I've not taken much time to think about it. I've just thought: ‘Get it under control and get my shot away’. And luckily I've caught it sweet.”
After a raking strike from distance against Hibs last season, the player admitted that is still the best left-footed goal of his career. “I think it’s the Hibs one last season for me, but that one felt just as good tonight. Hopefully I can keep adding numbers.”
Forrest wants a regular starting place at Hearts and has now put himself in contention to play against Hibs. “Yes, that's it. After the last couple of games, you see the competition's high and we've picked up a bit. We've carried that on from our result of the weekend. Another good performance stands us in good stead for Sunday.”
When asked if the derby was bigger than a Conference League win, Forrest gave a philosophical response. “Yes, I think so, but I think every game is important,” he said. “I think if you don't get a positive result tonight, the feeling's not as good going into the game on Sunday. So I think this one's massive tonight as well for us to keep the run going. That's two games down [in the Conference League], but obviously Sunday's massive for us as well, being the Derby. But we're in great form, so there's no reason why we can't go there and get three points on Sunday.”
Critchley’s methods have appealed to the Hearts players so far. “Yes, he's come in and you see all the players are buying into what he's trying to do,” Forrest pointed out. “We see that everyone's reacting, everyone's feeding into it. We want to just keep it going, one game at a time. We've done that with the two games so far, we've managed to have two positive results. Sunday is a couple of days away, so it's another massive game for us.”