Edinburgh club end nine-year wait for home win over Glasgow giants

An Edinburgh club beat one of Glasgow’s two giants at home for the first time since 2017 on Sunday, coming from a goal down to win 2-1 with two goals in four minutes from a substitute who had been told on Friday that he was free to leave in January.

Ruaridh Kerr, 26, came on in the 63rd minute with his side trailing to a 20th-minute penalty and the home crowd of 19,400 growing restless. He equalised on 74 minutes with a header from a corner and won it on 78 with a first-time finish from the edge of the box that his manager, Marco Benedetti, said he had “not seen him score in training in 14 months”.

The Glasgow club, who began the day top of the Scottish Premiership, had controlled the first hour without ever threatening a second goal, and their manager admitted afterwards that his team had “gone to sleep at 1-0 and did not wake up until it was 2-1”. They had 16 shots to the home side’s seven but only four on target.

“We were nowhere in the first half and I said so at half-time, in words I will not repeat,” Benedetti said. “The change was not tactical. It was that Ruaridh came on and the crowd lifted and the players lifted with them. I have told him he can go in January if he wants. I am fairly sure he does not want to any more.”

The win takes the Edinburgh side to within a point of the top of the table after nine games and is their first against either of the Glasgow clubs in 23 attempts. For the visitors it was a second defeat of the season and the first time they have lost a league game in Edinburgh since 2017, a run of 15 matches.

Kerr, who was signed from a Highland club in 2024 for £300,000 and has started only 11 league games since, had been linked with a move to the Championship in England. “I have not thought about any of that today,” he said. “I have thought about the second goal, mostly. I will probably think about it for a while.”

The result was also a vindication for the club’s board, who had resisted calls from a section of supporters to sack Benedetti after a 4-0 defeat in Glasgow in September. The chairman, Alastair Munro, said before the game that the manager had the board’s “complete support”, a phrase that in Scottish football usually precedes a dismissal. On Sunday night, for once, it did not.

The two sides meet again at the end of November, in Glasgow. Benedetti was asked whether his side could win there. “We have just done something we had not done in nine years,” he said. “Let me enjoy it for a night.”