Robbie Neilson admits ring rusty Hearts almost suffered a false start to their Premiership before coming good to claim three points against Ross County.
Despite being outplayed and County hitting the woodwork twice in the opening 45 minutes, second half strikes from Allan Forrest and Barrie McKay secured the win as Jordan White reduced the deficit late on. But the Jambos boss revealed he had to warn his players at the interval that the season had already started.
Neilson said: “We showed the rustiness of coming into competitive games from pre-season. Sometimes when you are out there and it’s 200 miles per hour and you need to come in and settle down and say, ‘right this is it now, the league has started. You can talk all you want in the build up to it, you need to be at it - when you go out there it can sometimes come at you like that’.
"I think just settling down the players and realising what they needed to do and we managed to do that. One of the plus sides of being in Europe is you can build into pre-season.
“But one of the downsides is you’re not involved in the Premier Sports Cup, which I like because you can come in and play four games and it’s competitive. I just felt the first half we didn’t have that competitive edge we needed, that energy to break forward. The second half was miles better after we spoke to them."
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