Aaron Mooy was a class above as Celtic strolled past Hearts in the Scottish Cup yesterday.
Fellow Australian Cammy Devlin has nothing but admiration for his midfield opponent.
However, the Jambos player admits he’d have loved nothing more than to have got one over his international teammate.
Mooy started the scoring after two minutes in the 3-0 game at Tynecastle. Kyogo and Cameron Carter-Vickers were also on the scoresheet, as Ange Postecoglou’s men booked their Scottish Cup semi-final slot.
The former Brighton and Huddersfield lynchpin has been an outstanding signing for Celtic this season and has really come into his own in recent months.
Devlin conceded Mooy was too good for Hearts on the day. He said: “He’s a top player. He showed his class today. On Wednesday we did well, we had an outside centre-back stepping in and putting pressure on him.
“Kye Rowles did well in both games but Mooy has played at the highest level.
“As a fellow team-mate with the national team, I have nothing but admiration for him.
“I hate saying that when he’s been on the opposing team.
“But I have grown up watching him in the A-League and then the Premier League and as a fellow Aussie I do admire him. He’s a great footballer and a great bloke. I just wish we’d got one over him.”
Hearts were without key players Lawrence Shankland and Robert Snodgrass for the match after Robbie Neilson admitted he couldn’t risk them with the long term in mind.
Devlin refused to make excuses for Hearts’ poor performance, though he was adamant it was far from ideal without two of their talismanic figures.
“You don’t want that, you don’t want any individuals to be out injured,” the midfielder said. “It’s the worst thing in football, you train every day to be out there playing in games.
“So, for those boys up there it’s not nice, you want to be out there helping the team.
“I know each one of them will be hurting as much as us and thinking they could have contributed.
“It’s good to see the long-term guys working as hard as they can to get back. And fingers crossed we’ll have as many as we can back soon.
“It happens. Before the World Cup break, we had injuries piling up. It felt like we had one every game and there are a few at the moment.
“But they are working as hard as they can to help the team and hopefully they’ll be back soon.”
Neilson admitted he couldn’t fault the effort and application from his depleted side on Saturday.
However, the manager was disappointed with some of his side’s quality on show, particularly when defending.
He added: "The biggest thing was losing the goal so early in the game, that was a real disappointment. Obviously coming into this game with the energy and trying to win it to get through, and losing a goal right away was difficult. We had the opportunity to cancel it out on the left-hand side and we let the boy through.
"To the players' credit and to the fans' credit, who were outstanding and got back behind the team, we managed to get a foothold back into the game and started to come into it with some chances and started to play well.
"And the crushing blow was the goal just before half-time. That was a real hard one because from a throw-in we weren't set up and then we know that Kyogo 99 times out of 100 will make that front-post run and we allowed him to make it. That was probably the key moment in the game.”
