Hearts loanee earns praise from boss as he scores 'super' goal in valuable experience hunt

A Hearts loanee has impressed his new boss after scoring his first senior goal.

Callum Sandilands was one of the young Jambos to depart Tynecastle for a crack in the SPFL during the winter transfer window. He joined Stewart Petrie’s Montrose side in League One until the end of the season ands scored during the weekend’s 1-1 draw with Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

Sandilands has been a regular ever since making the move to Links Park. His goal came as he burst throguh the centre of the park, going one on one with the goalkeeper and providing a lovely dinked finish.

Boss’ praise for Hearts loanee

Manager Stewart Petrie was delighted for the youngster after a big moment in his career. He said: “Scored a super goal from Callum, it's a wee break of the ball. great for Callum to get a goal as well and it's his first goal for us. Delighted with his composure with the finish.”

Hearts head Coach Neil Critchley said at the time of the youngster’s move: “The next stage of Callum’s development is to go and take the step in to senior football. He now has that opportunity at Montrose. We are hopeful he can go there, earn himself a place in the team and return to Tynecastle in the future having gained some momentum and invaluable experience.”

Montrose battling

Adding on the draw in the Highland which Sandilands played a major role in, Petrie added to club media: “We asked for a reaction after I thought last Saturday was as bad as we've been and we spoke about that for a while, for a long time in fact, so we wanted a reaction. We got that, I thought first half for shape and the way we set up was excellent. We thought they'd come out the second half, you'd expect that, Inverness are a good side and they've got some super players.

“And I thought we weathered the start of it and then it's a great pass for the goal, but ultimately for me we need to do better and get out and stop the ball in the wide area and we don't get out and then it goes in and then you're thinking last 10 minutes. I thought we defended really well the last 10 minutes of the game. In fact, I thought we had a couple of chances on the break.

“I thought probably if you look at overall at the last 10 minutes of the second half, it looked like that was the time we were going to score compared to the first 35 minutes. I thought we were camping a little bit, but over the piece really happy with the response to last week's performance and we'll certainly take a lot of encouragement from that. There's no easy game, we keep saying that at this moment in time, we seem to be better away from home than we are at home which is something we need to look at and work on. We're into the last quarter now and we've certainly got a big squad to pick from and we'll be looking to utilise that.”