NO STRAIN..NO GAIN

STUART FINDLAY has felt pressure before.

- BY ANDY NEWPORT

The big centre-back was at Kilmarnock when the club found itself teetering towards relegation in 2021.

He was back at Rugby Park last season as Killie again got caught up in a scrap for topflight survival.

It was then he first experienced real stress, strain - the realisation that losing a game of football can have serious consequences for the clubs staff.

Findlay would find himself running down the tunnel thinking not about how he was going to deal with the opposition striker but how hed handle the guilt of knowing it might be his mistake on the pitch that leads to redundancies off it.

So, to Findlay, the weight of responsibility of leading a title race is nothing compared to that suffocating pressure of knowing jobs are on the line.

And, of course, hed much rather be in the position he now finds himself in at Tynecastle as his table-topping Hearts team prepare to cross Edinburgh for Saturday's lunchtime derby clash at Easter Road.

He said: “Yeah, Id rather have the challenge of these big games when were up at the top end of the league rather than where the club was last year, and where I was with Kilmarnock last year, when you've got a different sort of pressure on you.

Pressures to try and stay in the league, pressures to save people's livelihoods.

“It's an honour to be involved in these games at the top end of the table. We don't take it for granted. We know how quickly it can go away.