Dundee 4
Heart of Midlothian 4 (5-4 on pens)
League Cup (Quarter Final)

Match Report

Dundee will be in today's Coca-Cola Cup semi-finals draw after coming through a pulsating two-hour quarter-final battle which went all the way to the wire at Dens Park last night.

On an evening of high drama, Hearts keeper Henry Smith making his 700th appearance for the Tynecastle club - went from saint to sinner in a split second.

He saved Paul Tosh's spot-kick to make the shoot-out score 3-2 in Hearts' favour. He then took the next kick himself and missed by a mile and when Willie Jamieson followed his lead, Dundee's great Dane Morton Wieghorst stepped up to fire the Dark Blues a step closer to Hampden.

The two sides shared six goals after normal time in a game which had seen Dundee go 2-0 ahead and Hearts fight back to square the tie in the final minute.

Five minutes into extra time, WIEGHORST, who played only after scraping through a fitness test, thought he had come up with the goods when he lashed a beautifully measured screamer past Hearts keeper Henry Smith from the corner of the 18yd box.

But Hearts had other ideas and it was all-square again at 4-4 two minutes into the second period of extra-time when John ROBERTSON lashed in a penalty awarded after Alan Lawrence was decked in the Dundee box.

An hour earlier, Dundee had been in the driving seat. In 36 minutes, SHAW latched on to a long ball from Dusan Vrto and outpaced David Winnie before lashing an angle drive past the stranded Henry Smith, who was making his 700th Hearts appearance.

And SHAW shocked Hearts again when he pounced on a loose ball to force the ball home after a Wieghorst free kick was hammered against a hearts defender.

Ten minutes after the restart, the Premier Division outfit had pulled one goal back - a virtually free back-post header from Dave MCPHERSON who rose to steer a Colquhoun free kick wide of Pageaud.

They immediately stepped up the pressure and desperate Dundee were saved twice by goal-line clearances from Duffy and Vrto as the mercurial John Robertson and livewire Alan Lawrence began to find gaps in the Dark Blues defence.

In 75 minutes Hearts were back on level terms when John COLQUHOUN hammered the loose ball home after Pageaud blocked a John Robertson shot from point-blank range.

But the relief in the huge travelling Hearts support lasted a minute at best - the time it took Paul TOSH to latch on to an awful Henry Smith clearance and hit the net to put Dundee back in front.

Hearts threw everything at Dundee in the last 14 minutes of a pulsating tie and, just as time appeared to be running out, Alan LAWRENCE pounced to keep the 9,500 crowd on the edge of their seats for another balf-hour.

Dundee boss Jim Duffy said. "After going through that, I don't care who we get in the semi finals. We're just happy to be there.

"When it went to sudden death I just held my breath and prayed that Morten would put the important one away. It was our just reward for a marvellous team per formance."

DUNDEE Pagenaud, Framingham, McQueen, Cargil (Duffy). Wieghorst. Duffy Shaw, Vrto (Bain). Tosh. Hamilton (Anderson), McCann.

HEARTS - Smith, Locke, Winnie (Jamieson) Barry, McPherson, Hamilton, Colquhoun, Mackay (Leith), Robertson, Hagen, Lawrence,

Referee - L. Mottram (Forth)

Attendance: 9,528.

Match report written by Aberdeen Press and Journal