Stuart Kettlewell joked he had to be Andy Halliday’s bodyguard after the ex-Hearts man downed 10-man Hibs with a late winner at Easter Road.
Halliday swept home Kofi Balmer’s monster throw-in with 10 minutes to go as rampant Well l made it six wins from their last seven games. It moves the Steelmen level with Rangers in third place. But Hibs slip to 10th on a miserable afternoon where they were made to pay for missed chances, sloppy defending and a naive red card for Nectar Triantis with 13 minute to go.
Halliday took pelters from the home crowd throughout the 90 minutes with regular reminders of the 2016 Scottish Cup final. But the veteran former Rangers man got the last laugh after Junior Hoilett had cancelled out Apostolos Stamatelopoulos’s opener for Well and Hibs fans turned their boos towards their own side.
And Kettlewell joked: “I was trying to protect Andy coming up to do the press afterwards! I think just because he’s obviously the ex-Hearts man. But I know one thing, just all kidding aside, Andy’s been wanting to pitch in with goals, his performances have been great.
“We know his quality, we know his experience, I know specifically he wants to start pitching in with as many goals and assists as he can with the role that he plays in the team. So he like all our senior players have contributed massively and it was some big performances again for us today.”
As well as sitting level third Well also have a League Cup semi final against Rangers to look forward to. But Kettlewell said: “We’re certainly not patting each other on the back and getting carried away. We want to start the league campaign really well which I think we’ve done to this point, we wanted to go a run in the cup which we’ve done.
“If you sit there feeling really comfortable with yourself and really happy about yourself and patting each other on the back then I tend to think that bad things start to come round the corner.”