The unseen Aaron McEneff Hearts quality that shows up my disgraceful celebration - Ryan Stevenson

I must to salute Aaron McEneff for his supersub performance to guide Hearts into the Scottish Cup semis on Saturday night.

Scoring within 27 seconds of coming on and then setting up the clincher? It was the absolute definition of impact sub.

Not only did he swing a breathless, topsy-turvy encounter with St Mirren back in the Jambos’ favour but McEneff gave a lesson to probably thousands of footballers - and nobody more than myself - about the importance of having the right attitude when stuck on the bench.

I purposely started by using the word salute. Because my own shocking mood on the occasions I was benched was never more embarrassingly on display than when I sent a gesture to my Partick Thistle manager Alan Archibald a few years back.

Talk about picking the wrong fight .. Archie was and still is a hard b******!

He had named me as sub for a game against Inverness back in 2015. I was sulking, no other word for it.

When I was thrown on late on I was still raging. I scored the winner in the 90th minute which should have been enough to say ‘point proven’.

But I wasn’t content with that and celebrated by running towards the bench and giving Archie the fingers. It was disgraceful.

Archie never missed me after that. I never kicked a ball for Thistle again and, although I apologised, was out the door two weeks later.

All I cared about was playing on a Saturday and the fact I was willing to my life at risk by flicking Archie the vickys shows how desperate I was to play football!

But it was totally the wrong way to go about it.

Looking back it’s one of the things I hated most about myself as a player. I couldn’t accept being on the bench.

I’d be raging I wasn’t starting even on the occasions I never deserved to start.

The