Hibs U19s suffered their second league defeat of the season as Hearts secured all three points at Oriam.
The hosts took a two-goal lead into half-time through Charlie Sanders’ close-range opener and Tommy North’s header on the cusp of half-time.
Jamie McMurdo pulled one back just beyond the hour mark, only for Callen Robb to reinstate Hearts’ two-goal advantage five minutes later.
Hibs went into the match with a chance of going six points clear of second-place Rangers with a victory and head coach Darren McGregor was frustrated to have not seized the opportunity.
After the final whistle he said: “I thought it was poor from start to finish, if I’m being honest. I’ve spoke about these games before and how important they are.
“In our position, obviously potentially we’re on to win the league, a really good position – while Hearts, maybe not much to play for, and have probably suffered a hangover from the Scottish Youth Cup final, and fair play to them.
“We need to be better in all moments of the game. If you looked at that game, you wouldn’t have known who was the team that was on to win the league and who wasn’t. Very, very poor for us, straight across the board.
“It’s obviously my job to try and get to the bottom of it, I can’t really explain why that was. The prep was right, obviously we knew how they would set up.
“They need to reflect on how they approached the game and how they performed within the game because I felt their arousal for the game was very, very low.”
Hibs host Hearts next week at HTC on Tuesday 5 May in the reverse fixture, giving the youngsters a chance to right their wrongs from last night’s disappointment
And McGregor is hoping for an immediate improvement as the two sides face off again next week.
“Of course that’s one plus point as we get to play them again really quickly.
“But if you’ve not got a determination to win your duels, to help your teammates around you, defend your box, then it’s going to be very difficult to win games of football and we’ve not done that well today.
“Hopefully we can learn, we can go over it, we can analyse it. But at the end of the day when you cross that line, especially against your rivals, you need to be ready to fight for your teammates and for the badge that you wear as well.
“We’ve not done that today and coming from a former player like myself, it’s disappointing. I said that to the lads, I’m disappointed. It was a very poor performance.”
Owen Calder added: “It’s really disappointing,”
league by the neck and move forward, and I think we struggled to be honest.
“I think Hearts were a younger team, we had older more experienced boys and that makes it more disappointing.
“I think we went in at half-time 2-0 down and that was the message, to get a goal back and then we move forward on that.
“We got the goal back and then not long after concede, it just kills all momentum. Really disappointing.
“[The manner of the goals conceded] was very, very disappointing,” Calder noted.
“I don’t think Hearts created much apart from the chances they took, and it was three balls in the box, three set pieces, so it’s something that we clearly need to work on and we’ll work on that moving forward.
“I think the boys will definitely be at it on Tuesday and we can push for a better result.”
