Derek McInnes has never been a manager who hides his feelings, and the 2-2 draw at Tynecastle showed it. When Benjamin Nygren put Celtic ahead, McInnes marched into the visitors’ technical area, visibly furious at the way a member of Martin O’Neill’s backroom staff was celebrating. It was a flashpoint in an afternoon already crackling with title-race tension.
McInnes didn’t dress it up afterwards. He described the culprit as one of Celtic’s inexperienced coaches who had got carried away, and it later emerged that first-team coach Mark Fotheringham was the man in question. Days later McInnes made clear the anger was real, saying he had faced plenty of dugouts and plenty of Celtic teams over the years and was genuinely annoyed by the reaction.
Supporters who share his frustration have a fair point. Celebrating in front of a home dugout, in a ground where the leaders were already under pressure, is the kind of provocation that invites trouble, and McInnes was entitled to be unhappy about it. Add the red card row, in which his comments about Celtic’s disciplinary record drew criticism from Peter Grant, and it is easy to see why Hearts fans feel Celtic bring a certain edge to these fixtures.
But it is a stretch to leap from one coach’s celebration to a verdict on an entire club. Fotheringham phoned McInnes to apologise, which is what you would hope to see between professionals, and McInnes accepted it. That is not the behaviour of a club trying to disrespect Scottish football, but of people who let emotions boil over and then put it right.
The rivalry will go on, and so will the heat. Passion is part of why Hearts versus Celtic matters, and a little bad blood is the price of a proper title race.
