Hearts midfield star Andy Halliday has detailed how the brawl between Jambos and Almeria players broke out earlier this month - claiming that an Almeria defender was the catalyst for chaos on the Mediterranean coast.
With Robbie Neilson's men trailing 1-0 to La Liga outfit Almeria in Spain on December 4, Alex Cochrane kicked the ball away from his opponent as the Spanish outfit went to take a free kick - a mischievous action that sparked chaos. In retaliation, an Almeria player grabbed Cochrane's neck and shoved him, causing benches on both sides to converge on the pitch and engage in a mass brawl, with the video going viral on social media almost instantly.
Neilson stopped the action and his players returned to the dressing room, before making their way back to Scotland a day later - meaning they didn't play a single minute more on foreign soil. And, with Kilmarnock on the horizon in the Scottish Premiership, Halliday has opened up on what actually happened - with the Spanish side seemingly instigating the brawl themselves.
Asked how it started on The Open Goal Podcast, Halliday said: "The ref gave no fouls for any tackles for about 20 minutes. The boy's come up and elbowed Alex, didn't give a foul, played on.
"Alex has got tight with one of those wee petulant ones where he's kicked it away. Their centre half's come flying over and shoved him to the deck."
Elsewhere, striker Lawrence Shankland further backed those claims, claiming that when back in the dressing room, Neilson's side were simply laughing at the incident out of sheer bewilderment.
Shankland said: “We were just laughing when we got back to the dressing room. With the initial incident with Alex, if that's where it stopped then nothing would have been made about it. It was the boy's reaction to that by charging over and sort of pushing Alex by the throat. You can't really have that sort of thing happening to your team-mate so everyone rushes over to sort it out. It was done after that.
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