Dundee boss James McPake hailed the desire and application of Jason Cummings after the substitute earned a point at Tynecastle.
The former Hibs frontman came off the bench with 28 minutes remaining and came up trumps late on, heading in a long Cammy Kerr throw.
Despite being the club’s top scorer with six goals this season, Cummings has started just once since Leigh Griffiths arrived at the end of August.
And McPake praised the attitude of the 26-year-old Scotland international, revealing Cummings predicted he’d grab the winner during the 1-1 draw at Hearts.
“Jason is a goalscorer but he’s shown a real desire and character that maybe people will doubt,” said McPake.
“He’s been brilliant in training.
“Even before today he was in contention to start on Wednesday night [against Ross County].
“He’s probably been disappointed [not to start] because his goal record at Dundee has been good.
“He’s a goalscorer and you always know when he’s in your team he is likely to get you a goal.
“It sums him up that we brought him over to give him some instructions and he said he was going to get the winner.
“He has confidence in himself and that’s great. He’ll be disappointed not to get the winner.
“He says he’ll score every game and he even talked Cammy Kerr into doing a long throw.
“We’ve been doing a long throw for three years and Cammy has never taken one – I’d like to say it was something we worked on but it wasn’t!”
‘We defended brilliantly’
Hearts went top of the table with the point and dominated possession against the Dark Blues.
They also hit the woodwork through Liam Boyce and Gary Mackay-Steven either side of John Souttar’s opening goal.
However, Dundee boss McPake insists his side didn’t “snatch a point” with the late goal.
He added: “It was character that got us the point.
“Nobody gave us a chance, some thought they would blow us away but they obviously hadn’t looked at the characters and quality we have in the squad – that was never going to happen.
“I don’t think we snatched a point. For all the possession they had, aside from the goal and the one that hits the post they didn’t trouble Adam Legzdins too much – they had five on target, we had three.
“We always felt in the game, a lot of their possession was in front of us.
“Performances have been good from the start and at times we’ve been devastated coming off the pitch with nothing, today you could say it was a fair result.
“We weren’t on top but we weren’t in too much trouble either. We defended our box brilliantly, the defence were excellent.
“I’m not overly pleased with a point because you always think you can nick something with that front three and Charlie Adam backing it up.
“In the end it was a decent point for us.”
