Lawrence Shankland admits you can feel the buzz around the Hearts training camp as we enter the business end of the season.
The post-split fixtures begin this weekend, with the men in maroon heading to Easter Road for a Sunday evening kick-off on the Sky Sports cameras.
It’s been a mix of emotions for the Jambos in the fixture this season, the joy of two late winners at Tynecastle, with a disappointing afternoon in Leith in the middle and Shankland believes lessons have been learned from that defeat that can help the Gorgie boys this Sunday.
Speaking to the media at the pre-match press conference, he said:
“There's an excitement about the place obviously, it's the business end of the season as people say, and we’re right in amongst it, so it's a good place to be.
“They're always good games, they're always the ones you want to play in, but for us it's just another match and it's another Derby match and it's one that we'll look to win.
“On the day you need to deal with the circumstances as well as you can, I felt last time we were at Easter Road, we kind of let ourselves down a bit for large spells of that game and probably for 60 minutes we weren't anywhere near where we had to be and then we managed to find the level after we got the first goal and we almost got a result out of the game and all in all we probably didn't deserve it but we could have nicked one at the end.
“All those small things, it's small margins you need to hang on to when you get into the games, the goals are obviously massive and they change the momentum of these games so there's a lot that can go into it but I think for us we just need to concentrate on starting the game well and bringing the best version of us on the day and we've shown through the season that the best version of us can win a lot of football games, so that's what we'll look to do.”
Asked us if the last Derby at Easter Road can help his teammates this time round, the skipper replied:
“I'm sure a few boys will have taken note of how that feeling was and as I said, that's how the games can go, they change so quickly with goals. Obviously, Hibs got an early one in that game and for 60 minutes they were really good to be honest, and we were really poor but as I said for how poor we were on the day, we still nearly nicked a result. So, there's elements of that that you can take positivity from, but we know we're going to need a much better performance for 90 minutes if we're going to go and get a result this time.
“I think the level of competitiveness is already there, these games are always competitive, and you need to be right up for that from the start, when you go to an away ground it can add to that as well. The crowd will be right up for it but so will our fans, over there in numbers, ready to get behind us and we can look forward to it.”
You can watch Lawrence’s press conference in full on Hearts TV.
