Kye Rowles has backed Garang Kuol to break his Hearts duck after the teenager bagged his first Australia goal.
Kuol tapped home to seal a homecoming win over Ecuador in Sydney after Jackson Irvine and Awer Mabil had put the Socceroos 2-1 up against the South Americans. Boss Graham Arnold included Kuol in his squad to give him a boost after finding game time hard to come by at Tynecastle. The on-loan Newcastle United kid has started just once in maroon since making the switch from Tyneside.
That has caused some Australian commentators to question the wisdom of signing for the capital club as Robbie Neilson acclimatises him gradually to the Scottish game. But Rowles has explained why the uncompromising nature of the game over here means Hearts have to be careful with Kuol. He’s also urged patience, recalling his own journey to first team football that took longer than a few weeks.
"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."
READ NEXT:
