Hearts friendly abandoned before half-time as ref "loses control" in mass brawl

Scottish Premiership outfit Hearts saw a friendly clash with UD Almeria in Spain abandoned as a result of "altercations between both sets of players".

Robbie Neilson's side are currently making the most of the mid-season break with a training trip in Europe in a bid to tune up for the return of the SPL, which is due to resume in a fortnight's time.

However, their exhibition match against Almeria - who are currently 14th in LaLiga - was marred by an ugly brawl between players. The clash saw two players receive red cards before the game was abandoned before the half-time interval following an intervention from Neilson.

According to Diario de Almeria, Hearts full-back Alex Cochrane initiated the brawl by throwing a punch at Almeria's Rodrigo Ely. And after tensions had built up during the match, players from both sides piled in and punches were thrown.

Both Cochrane and Ely saw red for their part in the melee before Neilson took his players off the pitch shortly before the break.

The Hearts boss explained his decision after the match - and he claimed that the referee had to take a portion of the blame for the unsavoury scenes as he "totally lost control".

He told HeartsTV: "It was a competitive game. All of a sudden, on the far side, there was a tackle from Alex, which I thought was just a standard tackle, and then all hell broke loose.

"All the players were running around, forehand smashes from their centre-half on Alex. I think the ref has totally lost control of it and both benches were over - there were about 60 people on the pitch.

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"So it was a bit of a shambles and we felt, it's a pre-season game, we've already got a number of injuries, there's no point in carrying on because tensions were extremely high, to the say the least."

Neilson continued: "When you come and play these games, there is always going to be a competitive edge but there's a line that you can't really cross, but it got crossed several times. The referee was all over the shop and couldn't get anything going again, so we just felt there's no point.

"We got nearly 45 minutes, it was a good runabout. We played a couple of days ago as well [a 4-0 defeat by Blackburn]. We'll just move on and head back to the training camp."

Hearts' match with Almeria came just days after Neilson's side were thumped 4-0 by Championship outfit Blackburn Rovers in Spain.

Hearts resume their domestic campaign against Kilmarnock on 17 December.

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