We were rubbish, says honest Hibs boss Paul Heckingbottom

Paul Heckingbottom admits Hibs were terrible as they were comfortably beaten by Kilmarnock.
Paul Heckingbottom felt Hibs delivered a typical end-of-season performance.Paul Heckingbottom felt Hibs delivered a typical end-of-season performance.
Paul Heckingbottom felt Hibs delivered a typical end-of-season performance.

The manager was disappointed by the award of the penalty that allowed the hosts to score the only goal of the game after David Gray was harshly deemed to have fouled Alex Bruce in the box in the first half.

Heckingbottom felt the Kilmarnock defender went down easily, and made his feelings known towards his former Sheffield Wednesday team-mate during an angry exchange as they crossed paths in the media room afterwards, but his main source of frustration was the lacklustre performance his team delivered.

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“We’re not going to rely on refs to win the game,” he said. “It’s down to us - we were rubbish that’s why we didn’t win. You get too many games like that at this time of the year – teams with nothing to play for against a hungry team.

“There would have been loads of people who had that result down on an accumulator but you want to be the one who controls that and puts in a performance rather than what was a typical end-of-season performance. We’ve had a week when we’ve had conversations and there are reasons for it but you still want to put in performances. The players are as disappointed as I am.”

Asked further about the award of the penalty, which was converted by Eamonn Brophy, Heckingbottom said: “You can see it’s soft. Alex felt contact, went down and the ref has seen it. The ref might have been watching from something before that incident, I don’t know. But we won’t be reliant on referees. It would have been harsh on Killie if they’d not won.”