David Templeton has revealed he was on the receiving end of a bizarre rant from former Hearts boss Csaba Laszlo when the gaffer mistakenly believed the team had lost a game they had actually won.
Laszlo watched a youth team clash with Celtic and departed with the Hoops 2-1 in front and two minutes left on the clock following a magical showing from mercurial Northern Irishman Paddy McCourt.
The following day, the furious Jambos gaffer proceeded to slaughter his charges for their 'defeat' despite the fact they had scored two late goals to win 3-2.
The bemused Hamilton winger told the Football Daft podcast : “When I went I was a kid, so I was in the youths, and that’s when it was mainly all the Lithuanians and foreign coaches, so I never really got to train with many of them.
“I started training when it was actually (coach) Stevie Frail, I started training with the first team, and then obviously Csaba came in. But he was a strange character, Csaba.
“He used to slaughter the young boys. I remember we played the reserves, and we were playing Celtic at Forthbank, Stirling Albion’s stadium, and if Celtic won that day, they would have won the reserve league.
“So, they had Paddy McCourt playing, and he was tearing us apart, and it ended up it was 2-1 - 86th minute.
“I scored to go 2-2, and then I think it was wee Scott Robinson scored the winner, 3-2 - stopped them winning the league.
“We came back in training on the Monday and Csaba was like ‘it’s not good enough, you can’t lose to them’, and stuff.
“Like, what the f***? What’s he talking about?
“He left at 86 minutes - he thought we got beat 2-1. Didn’t have a clue.
“And we’re looking at him like ‘what the f***?’ This is the first team manager and he’s slaughtering us for getting beat when we had won.”
The Hearts owner at the time Vladimir Romanov is one of the most colourful characters to grace Scottish football.
While he was a never ending source of entertainment, his madcap antics had an unhappy end for the Gorgie club when they ended up in administration.
And while some stars had to tentatively box the Russian owner or indulge his exaggerated tales of basketball prowess, Templeton's problem was stranger - the barmy owner would nab his boots to practice his finishing skills!
He said: “He hit shots in to his interpreter, and if there were no goals, he would just kick the ball and his interpreter would have to go and get the ball and bring it back to him.
“It was like a wee puppy dog, having to get the ball for him.
“But we’d be training, and a couple of the boys would be like ‘by the way, he’s got your boots on’.
“He used to just go in the boot room and put my boots on, because he was the same size as me. I was the only one that was a size seven; he used to take my boots. I swear, I’m not even joking.”
