The game finished 2-1 and Hartson explained the post-match scene in the dressing room.
“After the game, all the lads are delighted,” he continued. “We’ve got into a Scottish Cup final. Really tough game. It was windy, the pitch wasn’t great.
“I’m just sitting there like a spoiled kid, still disappointed with coming off you know? It’s all, ‘well done, lads, great finish and all’. We’re in a final, in something to look forward to at the end of May.
“Martin has gone, ‘John’, the room’s just gone silent. ‘What’s the matter with you’? And I said, ‘look’, I said, ‘why did you bring me off’? He said, ‘look son, every now and again’, he said, ‘you’ve got to run around a little bit. And in the 72nd minute, John, you just weren’t moving. So I brought you off.”
O’Neill’s assistant John Robertson was in close proximity.
“Martin’s come towards me and I’ve stood up,” Hartson recalled. “There was never, ever going to be a reaction from me, a physical reaction. He said to John not to sort of hold him back, Martin says that, but from my point of view, nothing was going to happen.
“I stood up just to, like almost, you know, overpower him. There was a sense of, because of that, the whole night became subdued. I spoiled the night. Typical, behaving completely like a spoiled brat.
“And managers I always feel now, even though I played for loads of managers, I always feel the manager is always right. Whatever decision the manager makes. Looking back, I think he was right.”
