Lewis Stevenson remembered how to score again as a rare goal secured Hibernian a point and a shot at Europe.
Learning entirely new tricks like how to make a fully-committed tackle and avoid a red card in the current climate could, however, be beyond him. The 35-year-old felt for team-mate Jimmy Jeggo after the midfielder was sent off by Craig Napier when he slid in to win the ball before colliding with Saints’ Connor McLennan. Inexplicably, VAR Chris Graham backed Napier’s curious call to dismiss the Austrian.
That saw Hibs boss Lee Johnson launch a savage attack on the ref’s performance and the entire officiating set-up. He may have gone in even harder if the blunder had proved costly to his team’s top-six ambitions, but they were able to see out the draw with 10 men. His veteran left-back Stevenson admitted players are at a loss. He said: “If you’ve played football for 20 years, it’s hard to change the way you tackle now. When I started, there were tackles flying in all the time. You were told to go in hard.
“Now you can’t – you need to stay on your feet, but that’s a different technique. At the time, I honestly thought it was a free-kick to us. Jimmy touched the ball and the guy has kicked his foot. If he had his studs up, fair enough, but Jimmy never went in to hurt anyone. I think refs could err on the side of caution sometimes. Maybe play a safe decision and, if it does need to be looked at, then they can.”
The technology era has been a mess since St Johnstone’s win at Hibs in the first VAR game in Scotland in October. On Saturday, VAR should have helped Napier wipe the red card and Stevenson feels it is affecting the flow of games.
He said: “I know it’s a very hard job, everyone appeals, there’s a lot of noise and split-second decisions. But it feels stop-start. I don’t know why things take so long. For the first 15 minutes, it felt like the ball was in play for two minutes! It needs to go a bit quicker. We look at running stats and, in some games like that, we hardly move because we’re standing about for most of it. There were only five minutes of stoppage time but there could’ve been 10.”
Mind you, that would have given Hibs longer to sweat over a top-half finish after David Marshall was culpable in letting Stevie May’s overhead kick squirm from his grasp to give Saints the lead.
But after Stevenson levelled, the former Scotland keeper produced some quite outstanding saves as he atoned for his earlier mistake.
Stevenson added: “Jimmy is the one who got punished but luckily we didn’t. After the red, St Johnstone were a lot better and we probably rode our luck. There was good defending from Paul (Hanlon) and Will (Fish), and Marsh had a couple of great saves.
“It might become a big point, so we’ll look at the positives. There’s obviously been improvement from last season. We need to kick on now. There are five massive games and we need to pick up as many points as possible and finish as high as we can.”
The equaliser was Stevenson’s 10th career goal, but his first since July 2018 against Faroese side NSI Runavik. He joked the latest string to his bow could enhance his chances of a new deal.
He said: “The club has a lot of important things to sort out. I’m sure I’m not on the priority list, but I hope something will be sorted. I still think I can do a decent job – and I’m adding goals to my game! The gaffer said at half-time he’d had a feeling I’d score. I’m glad he did – because I didn’t!”
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