Kye Rowles has his say on Garang Kuol's place at Hearts as defender backs international team-mate

Kye Rowles has urged patience as team-mate Garang Kuol continues to acclimatise to British football following his signing for Hearts in the January transfer window.

The 18-year-old arrived at Tynecastle Park with much fanfare, including the tag of “wonderkid”, after making the move from Central Coast Mariners to Newcastle United in the top flight of English football.

Kuol had already played for his nation at the World Cup and expectation was he would light up the cinch Premiership after a six-month loan deal was agreed by the Jam Tarts for his services.

Things have not gone according to plan so far with Kuol starting just once in seven appearances and still without a goal or assist to his name.

Kye Rowles (right) congratulates Garang Kuol after the latter scored in Australia's 3-1 win over Ecuador last week. Picture: SNS

Rowles, who arrived at Hearts in the summer window from the same club, recalled his struggles to establish himself in the first team at the same age, and that was without flying halfway across the world to compete in a completely different footballing environment.

He believes the speedy attacker will eventually show his true worth with a bit of time.

"You don't really get to walk into teams, unfortunately," he said. "It's probably what you want but sometimes it just doesn't go that way. It took myself 18 months from when I signed my first contract to kind of break into the starting 11 in a first team. We just tell him to just keep doing his thing.

"Scoring goals for your national team's obviously going to help a long way and I think once he breaks his duck over in Scotland, he'll really show his true colours and just hit his straps and start flying. He's so young and he's learning every day. The Scottish league is very physical and it's a different style of play than what it is back here.

"They don't care who you are over there, they're just going to go through you. They don't hold back challenges. He's just keeping his head down and he's working hard and hopefully he starts getting more and more minutes because he can show what he can do. He only got 12 minutes on Friday and he had that kind of impact. So hopefully he just keeps kicking on."

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