GARY LOCKE, the Hearts manager, has been left without half of his team for Saturday's match at Inverness after David Smith was ruled out for six weeks with a hairline knee fracture.
This latest setback means the club will make the journey north without five recognised first team players, with Jason Holt - though he is back training - and Jamie Walker still out injured and Kevin McHattie and Callum Paterson unavailable through suspension.
Smith was forced off at half-time with a knee injury during the recent League Cup semi-final defeat to Inverness Caledonian Thistle and was sent for a scan earlier this week after the problem flared up in training. "It's a massive blow for the lad as I thought he had being doing fantastic for us recently," said Locke.
"The problem flared up and we sent him for a scan. [But] he doesn't require surgery and just has to rest then things should settle down."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article