Describing the events in Glasgow as “deeply disturbing”, the Edinburgh club say: “We will make no further comment at this time other than to say that it is completely unacceptable that our players and staff were put in that situation.<\/p>\n
“Given the menacing and threatening atmosphere inside the stadium, our entire staff had no alternative but to leave immediately, without undertaking post-match media duties. <\/p>\n
“To our media partners, we apologise, but the safety of our staff was our prime focus during these unacceptable scenes.”<\/p>\n
Hearts also noted that “nobody seemed to know whether or not the match had been brought to a finish”, given the Celtic fans entered the field in the immediate aftermath of the third goal and with time still notionally left to play.<\/p>\n
The latest incident comes after fans of both Celtic and Rangers invaded the pitch following the Scottish Cup quarter-final at Ibrox.<\/p>\n
Hearts say they “expect the strongest action possible to be taken by the footballing authorities” to protect “the integrity of our game”.<\/p>\n
“This season has seen Hearts capture the imagination of football fans, not only in Scotland but the world over,” they add. <\/p>\n
“We pay tribute to Derek McInnes, his staff, the first team and the supporters, who have done the club proud this season. None of them deserved the disgraceful scenes that unfolded.”<\/p>\n
The SPFL says it will be making no comment on the post-match scenes until it has seen their match delegate’s report.<\/p>\n
However, it is believed that the match officials have confirmed that the full-time whistle was blown before the players left the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Describing the events in Glasgow as “deeply disturbing”, the Edinburgh club say: “We will make no further comment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":965606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-965605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116587231307260681","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}