Why Steven Naismith will have Hearts on high alert ahead of Scottish Cup away day at Spartans - Ryan Stevenson

Scottish Cup away days at this time of year always send a shiver down spine - and not just because of the plunging temperatures. Hearts fans won’t need any reminding of the potential for a slip-up against lower league opposition when they head to take on Spartans this weekend after their embarrassment at Brora three years ago.

There may be three divisions and 32 places between the sides but that counts for nothing if Steven Naismith’s players come back from their winter break in the wrong frame of mind. The opportunity is there to create memories for a lifetime because Hearts should be looking to win the competition. I never got that lucky. But I’ve got plenty of memories from the Scottish Cup nonetheless. And just a few brushes with disaster.

At Ayr we drew Lochee United at their wee ground in Dundee. Not a problem ... or so we thought. The first game was called off because the pitch was frozen solid, which wasn’t unusual. But when it got called off for a FIFTH time it became a major headache because it kept taking priority over the league games which meant we had gone three weeks without a match.

Even then it had to go ahead on a Wednesday lunch time because they had no floodlights. The final call-off came on the Monday afternoon and we tried to get the game switched but the SFA booted that idea into touch.

So we trailed ourselves up to Dundee on the Wednesday morning, missing a host of our part-time players because they’d rescheduled their shifts at work once too many times for a game that kept getting called off.

When we arrived there was a tractor going up and down the pitch scraping the snow and ice off the surface. I remember being tackled more than once by the huge tread marks on the wing!

And after all that we