McCRACKEN RETURNS TO CENTRAL DEFENCE

Manager Alex Smith is determined to take the lessons learnt on Saturday at Tynecastle into tonight's CIS Cup tie versus Queen's Park at Tannadice. Speaking on Tuesday afternoon he said: "The outcome of Saturday's match was disappointing. We started out very brightly and dominated the first 23 minutes of the game; we created several chances of which none were taken, which proved to be costly as Hearts scored in their second real chance of the game through Valois. That obviously gave them a lift and we had to battle on. In the second half we started out well again, Mark Wilson had a header just glancing past the post, then we lost a second very slack goal in the 12th minute of the second half through bad marking. This very much put Hearts in the driving seat. Nevertheless, we came back in the last 20 minutes and created another couple of chances but didn't manage to convert. We lost the game even though we played reasonably well at stages. In the final analysis, we lacked the finishing touch and defended badly and this was very disappointing. Lessons have been drawn and we hope to take them forward starting with tonight's match. First of all, we will have to set the tempo of the game, and hope that our full-time strength and the extra qualities in our team will carry us in what will be a very tough encounter. And we are pleased to give David McCracken the opportunity to come back into first team football tonight. Furthermore, Stephen O'Donnell, Jim Paterson and Jim McIntyre will also come back in. Queen's Park are always a very hard team to beat, they have great fighting spirit, play for each other, and are very difficult to break down. We will need our Premier League qualities to overcome their strengths and are confident we can do so. But Queen's Park over the years have always been very very difficult opponents and have produced great and famous players and they have to be respected."