He's well aware it's too late to make a difference, but Nick Montgomery confessed he would still welcome a Scottish FA explanation over Hearts' controversial penalty in Wednesday's Edinburgh derby.

When referee Kevin Clancy was invited to the pitchside monitor to review a coming together between Will Fish and Kenneth Vargas during the midweek 1-1 draw, the Hibs manager feels both dugouts were expecting the decision to be reversed. It was all the more galling for the Hibs manager, then, that Clancy stuck to his original view, allowing Lawrence Shankland to convert a penalty that earned Hearts a 1-1 draw.

Montgomery expressed 'surprise' that the VAR monitor was stationed on the opposite side on the pitch, in uncomfortably close proximity to vast swathes of the home support, and stands by his view that the outcome was absolutely the incorrect one.

“I would love an explanation. We had an apology after the Aberdeen game, and I said before that doesn’t matter if you get an apology, it doesn’t change the outcome or the result.

“In this case, in a game of that magnitude, when the fans are going to shout for everything, players are going to throw themselves on the floor.

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“I think, in that incident, the VAR worked perfectly to call the referee over to have a look. I was a bit surprised that the screen was on the side where 8000 fans were, screaming around the referee.

“Me watching it on the monitor, just the body language of their dugout, I think they realised it probably wasn’t going to be going. We realised it probably wasn’t going to be given – and anyone watching it realised it probably wasn’t going to be given.

“But the referee has a decision to make after seeing it again. In my opinion, it’s never a penalty. Ever. And I don’t think many people thought it would be.

“So it’s disheartening. I did feel sorry for the players and the fans who came, because they deserved to go away with a victory.  As a coach, it’s disappointing.

“But ultimately you have to respect the referee’s decision and we have to put trust in the system, that it’s going to work. So hopefully we’ll get some decisions moving forward.

“It definitely would have been nice to get an explanation as to why it was given. But it doesn’t change anything now.”

Montgomery, though, accepts that better finishing on Hibs' part would have rendered the incident an irritating footnote to a first Tynecastle win since 2019. And, as his team continue their push for the top six at home to Ross County today, he revealed that adding a clinical edge to their improved attacking displays was a key topic of conversation in the post-derby debrief.

“That’s exactly what we’ve spoken about. We shouldn’t have needed VAR or the referee to have any influence at Tynecastle – the game should have been over.

“We had four or five cleared off the line. Again, you can say that’s good defending. But you can also say we weren’t clinical enough in putting the ball in the back of the net.

“If we had done that, a bad decision in the game wouldn’t have cost us the two points. We would have been out of sight. With the amount of chances we created, 21 shots, maybe 10 on target, to come away with a point from a game, having dominated the way we did, is disappointing.

“We take the point and move on, continue to create the opportunities, just hope to be a bit more clinical, moving forward."

But can that be a tricky thing to coach? Build-up and attacking patterns can be drilled over and over, but the finishing touch, ultimately, rests with a player making the right decision in front of goal, and executing it efficiently.

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“Look, creating chances is the first thing," Montgomery explained. "If you don’t do that, you won’t score goals. So we just have to keep creating, keep making the runs in the box.

“Obviously you need a bit of luck sometimes if three or four just hit a defender on the line. Either side of him, above him or even just close to his feet, it’s a goal. Sometimes defenders get lucky.

“But we have to be accountable. We have to believe that, by keeping doing the right things, the goals will come. In football you stick to the process.

“It’s not like the boys don’t want to score. They all want to get goals. We just need to keep hitting the right areas."