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James Keatings keeps Celtic u-19's on top

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Celtic’s u-19 side survived a brutal encounter at Riccarton today to beat Hearts 1-0 and maintain their 100% record.

The game wasn’t without loss however with matchwinner James Keatings red carded in injury time and Jordan Lowdon suffering a bad leg injury.

Keatings will be suspended for next weekend’s game against Rangers while Lowdon will be assessed tomorrow to discover the extent of his injury.

A tenth minute booking for Hearts midfielder Jordan Morton’s late challenge on Callum Bagshaw should have acted as a warning but the referee’s inexperience showed up as he allowed a succession of similar challenges to go unpunished.

The referee looked badly out of his depth and appeared apologetic as he ‘warned’ Hearts players but appeared reluctant to take any further action.

PICTURE LEFT: A Hearts defender slides through Keatings in front of the assistant referee- throw-in to Celtic

At u-19 level the game is professional, the match needs controlled properly. It’s not the referee’s job to try and get through the match showing as little cards as possible.

Players expect there to be strong physical challenges, it’s an essential part of the game, but they also need protected when the challenges become crude and threaten injury.

For the watching Scotland u-21 manager Billy Stark it will have been virtually a wasted journey with none of the creative players on the park able to demonstrate their skills.

Keatings and Patrik Twardzik were repeatedly caught by late challenges which largely went unpunished. If nothing else it was an exercise in self discipline for the young Celts which they carried out impressively until Keatings could take no more after being sandwiched in front of the baying Hearts officials.

Flashing out a boot in frustration as he hit the deck Keatings was immediately red carded with neither of the Hearts players involved spoken to before play resumed with a free kick to Celtic.

“Keats shouldn’t have reacted like that,” coach Stevie Frail said afterwards. “The treatment was a bit physical and brutal at times but he shouldn’t react. We’ll speak to him about that.

“It was a tough game, Hearts are a good side. We knew that it would be difficult, we were disappointed in some aspects of the way that we played- we can play better than that- but in terms of character and protecting a lead we’re delighted.

“I thought that our two centre-backs were immense, Matty (Hughes) came in for a lot of criticism after last week’s game with Albion Rovers but I thought that he was fantastic today. That was the response that I wanted and expected from him, he was first class.

“Hearts like to play a bit and are a strong physical team and we had to stand up to that.

“We’re delighted with the goal, we have liked to have did that more but it’s a tough place to come, the conditions weren’t great but we got the three points and we move on.”

Hearts had the first chance of the game in the third minute when a long range free kick from Dennis Prychenko was pushed round the post for a corner by Robbie Thomson.

Callum McGregor almost gave Celtic the lead 11 minutes later when he smacked his shot against the post after a brilliant pass from Keatings inside the Hearts right-back.

Thomson saved another free kick from Prychenko in the 20th minute but was relieved to see Colin Hamilton’s header come off the crossbar from the resulting corner.

Just past the half hour Hearts had a golden chan ce to take the lead when a penalty was awarded against Michael Ordish for raising his hand to the ball defending a free kick.

From my angle it looked a harsh decision but justice was done when Thomson dived to his right to push away Fraser Mullens spot kick with last week’s practise in the shoot-out win over Albion Rovers proving priceless.

Hamilton joined Morton in the referee’s book on the stroke of half time but before that Lowdon’s involvement was ended by a late challenge that went unpunished by the referee.

Bahrudin Atajic replaced the injured Lowdon and moved up front alongside Keatings with McGregor dropping into central midfield alongside Bagshaw.

Three minutes into the second half the substitute was involved in the only goal of the game. Creating space 20 yards from goal Atajic collected Twardzik’s pass and teed the ball up perfectly for Keatings to drill the ball home from 15 yards out for his seventh goal in three matches.

Celtic were well in command but on an exposed uneven surface there was always the chance that a slip could provide Hearts with an equaliser.

Hughes and Lewis Toshney marshalled the side well from defence but there were no failure’s in the Celtic side as they stuck to their tasks to maintain both their 100% and clean sheet records for the season.

Some of the gloss was taken off the result by Keatings sending off. If he had been offered proper protection through the game he’d have been able to shrug off the injury time double foul on him but 18-year-old’s are only human and that proved to be one kicking too many for Celtic’s top scorer.

CELTIC: Thomson, O’Donnell, Toshney, Hughes, Brennan; Bagshaw, Lowdon (Atajic); Ordish, P Twardzik, McGregor; Keatings

SUBS: Feely, Atajic, Gormley, Jones, Chalmers, Feruz, Herron.

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