Inside a Hearts dressing room after Rangers or Celtic maulings as Gary Locke's 7-0 sympathy sticks out - Ryan Stevenson

It's not much fun being on the end of a sore one at the hands of the Old Firm.

But I’d be willing to bet Robbie Neilson didn’t rip the paint off the walls in the Ibrox dressing room on Sunday.

There would be no point.

He will have been gutted to ship five to Rangers, but he’ll know Hearts’ season won’t hang on how they get on against Celtic and Rangers.

Sometimes you need to write it off as a bad day at the office and draw a line under it.

Don’t get me wrong, the players will be hurting.

But we’ve all been there. I enjoyed some decent results against Rangers and Celtic – but I had some stinkers as well.

I remember we beat Rangers at Tynecastle and then faced Celtic the following week. We were feeling pretty confident, but we got battered by four.

Paddy McCourt tore us to bits but it was nothing compared to the strips Jim Jefferies and Billy Brown took off us afterwards. But at other times we had managers who didn’t say much on the back of losing games by three or four – or worse.

I remember losing 7-0 to Celtic at Tynecastle and to twist the knife I scored an own goal past Jamie MacDonald, who actually told me it was the best finish out of the seven!

Gary Locke knew there was no benefit in giving us more punishment in the dressing room.

That was a tough time and a team full of kids. He needed us to forget it as quickly possible and that’s usually the case.

When Jim let rip that was a dressing room full of men and we were established in third for a good while.

But most of my gaffers knew deep down that it was a bit of a free punch against the Old Firm and it was important not to dwell on it when things didn’t go to plan.

In fairness, if you look at the results back in my day, more often than not we’d come back with