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Daily Record
Daily Record
Sport
Will Lancaster

Watch Garang Kuol score first Australia goal as Hearts loanee earns place in Socceroos history books

Australia could have fielded almost a full starting team of past and present SPFL players in their 3-1 win over Ecuador earlier today - with Garang Kuol scoring his first international goal for the Socceroos.

Scottish Premiership stars Kye Rowles, Aziz Behich and Keanu Baccus - of Hearts, Dundee United and St Mirren respectively - all started for Graham Arnold's side, who were featuring in their first run of international games since falling to a heroic 2-1 defeat against eventual winners Argentina in the World Cup. Meanwhile, Kuol, Harry Souttar, Jackson Irvine, Jason Cummings, Cammy Devlin, Nathaniel Atkinson and Alex Robertson - who is also eligible to play for Scotland's national side - all started the game on the bench.

Former Celtic, Hibs and Ross County man Irvine got the scoring underway, before Felix Torres equalised for the South American side shortly after.

Awer Mabil, of Cadiz in Spain, restored the Aussie advantage just 10 minutes later, before a close encounter ended in Kuol sealing the win with a goal in the 85th minute - after a lung-bursting assist from Dundee United man Behich.

Kuol became the fourth-youngest scorer in Australian national team history at just 18 years and 190 days old - with Socceroos boss Arnold calling him up despite acknowledging his poor start at Hearts.

He said at the start of the month: “He's had a bit of a tough start at Hearts. The Scottish game, and the way that it's played, is completely different to Australia, so it's going to take a little bit of time for him to settle in with that and obviously learn that. I know the expectations of the kid are always very, very high, and going to Hearts I can imagine that was exactly the same, so it's a learning process for Garang and making sure that he can deal with it and we can be here to help him deal with it."

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