Paul Heckingbottom tells his Hibs players to hunt glory - plus update on quartet's fitness

Paul Heckingbottom has urged his players to be a bunch of glory hunters, to become the one who ends Hibs’ eight match winless run.

Paul Heckingbottom

The Easter Road head coach was left frustrated again as he watched his side surrender the lead once more, forced to settle for a draw against Hamilton as Ross Cunningham’s penalty cancelled out Stevie Mallan’s first half opener.

And, as he had been at Pittodrie a fortnight earlier, the Yorkshireman admitted to being bemused as to how both Aberdeen and the Accies had claimed 1-1 draws despite having far fewer goal-scoring opportunities than his side.

He said: “It was a corner at Aberdeen, they had two efforts and scored from one. This week it was a penalty decision by the referee.

“I am not complaining about that because we have to focus on making sure these things are irrelevant and take our chances at the other end, focus on what we can do to win games.

“Probably the overriding frustrating things is we are seeing most of it but we are not seeing the end product, the three points which the players are deserving of.

“There has to be a belief. We are creating good chances, we should be scoring more goals than we are. We probably got more bodies in the box (against Hamilton) in the first half than the second but we were pushing towards the end.

“We brought on a lot more attacking players but they have to come on with the intent, not just to get on the ball, but to get in the box, be the one that gets the glory, gets the three points for us.”

Meanwhile, Heckingbottom has admitted he is no closer to seeing the injured David Gray, Darren McGregor, Martin Boyle and Vykintas Slivka back in action.

Boyle, who is recovering his second knee operation this year, is progressing, the Australian internationalist having done some “one-on-one coaching” with the head coach who told Hibs TV: “He is progressing but he is still some way away from playing.”

The winger is, however, probably the closest of the quartet to a return, according to Heckingbottom. McGregor, who has been out with a pelvic problem since mid-August, is “progressing slowly,” but his comeback will be “led by his symptoms,” midfielder Slivka is “still feeling it” as the broken bone in his ankle heals and Gray, sidelined from the end of August with a knee injury, continues to work towards fitness in the gym.