Craig Gordon has hailed the desire of John Souttar after he capped off his injury return with the winner against Celtic.
The Hearts defender missed most of last season with achilles problems and Gordon was thrilled to see him come back and be so important to the team.
Gordon himself has had his injury issues in the past and knows how it can be to be on that lonely road to recovery in the gym.
Souttar even had a slightly setback during the Premier Sports Cup but returned for the first league game and Gordon is thrilled to see it happen.
He said: “I have to give John enormous credit in the lead-up to that goal. He chased back and made an unbelievable tackle, he then makes a header from the ground to stop a counter-attack and then won a foul.
“Then he goes up there and sticks his head on it and scores the winner.
“That epitomised the fight that was in the squad to make sure we went and got off to a good start and performed the best we could.
“We knew if we could go out there and fight as hard as we could, the fans would get behind us and respect the fact we were giving everything.
“We did that and we were lucky enough to come away with the win.
“It’s huge for him and the number of times he’s had to come back and show that character time and time again. And then perform at that level.
“He’s made such a difference to the team. He’s done so well for us. Last week, his ankle blew up after the Stirling Albion game and he got a bad knock and he’s fought back from that.
“He got through the 90 minutes as one of our best centre backs. He’s shown great resilience throughout and I was so pleased that he set the move up for his goal.
“There were so many things that were down to him for that winning goal. It was just brilliant.”
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