Running into acres of space to collect a Neil Pointon pass, Allan Johnston charged into the box, sat down Andy Goram before firing into the empty net. Rangers 0, Hearts of Midlothian 3.

Since that famous victory against a Rangers side of Goram, Gough, Durrant and Laudrup in 1996 only three players have scored a winning goal at Ibrox wearing the maroon and white.

The most recent was Osman Sow in 2014. The opening game of the Championship season saw two of the title favourites go head-to-head. One team had recently been in administration, another rebuilding after liquidation. The rangey Swede won the match in dramatic fashion with the home side having thought they had grabbed a late point.

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Two years previous, Hearts had come from a goal behind to win 2-1 thanks to Ian Black and Jamie Hamill. The Gorgie side would go on to win the Scottish Cup. Rangers? It would be their final top-flight season for four years. 

Then there was a Wednesday night in 2004. The penultimate game of the league season. Rangers had finished well off the pace, while Hearts, under Craig Levein, had already secured their second third-place finish in consecutive seasons.

It was meant to be an evening where the Ibrox crowd paid homage to some of their Dutch contingent with Frank and Ronald de Boer as well as Michael Mols all departing at the end of the season. Instead, it was a 20-year-old from Bellshill playing for the visitors from the Capital who grabbed the headlines.

 

"Until you said 20 years, I had no idea how long it was," Joe Hamill told Hearts Standard. "A long time ago!

"You still get people who talk about it at work and people always ask how did it feel. It was my job. It is after you stop playing or get further along in your career that [you realise] these things are big and make a difference to people. Just playing football was a job, I didn't think anything of it at the time.

"People come up and say 'I can't believe you scored at Ibrox'. Eventually, it hits you. Back then and even years after it, I didn't think anything of it."

Hearts traveled through to Govan on that Wednesday night without a win against Rangers in 24 games (home, away and neutral venues included). A run stretching back to the first game of the 1998/99 season. To end it with Dougie McDonald as the man in the middle was all the more impressive.

For Hamill, one of the youngsters promoted from the academy by Craig Levein, he was just grateful to be given the opportunity against a side that included a mix of Scottish youth and experienced internationals as well as one Mikel Arteta.

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"The players they had and resources available to them were unbelievable," he said. "It was a privilege to play, a privilege to score.

"My family are the green and white side, that was massive for them, they were loving that. I was grateful to have the opportunity to play that night, score and help the team."

Twenty years on and Hamill still downplays the fact he is just one of three Hearts players to have scored a winning goal at Ibrox for nearly 30 years. He even credited his wife as the person to speak to about what he achieved and did in his career. Yet, he recognised the possessed in the moment in front of a large crowd.

It all came from some eager closing down after a hopeful ball played down the left-hand side of the Rangers defender. Alan Hutton sold Allan McGregor short and Hamill pounced.

"It wasn't a good connection and I've latched onto it, running through one one-on-one with Allan McGregor," he remembered. "Thinking back I probably had quite a lot of time. Normally when you have got more time in football you make the wrong decision.

"Do you chip it? When you look at it I could have went round him, went over but what was in my head was put it past him and it worked."

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He added: "I don't remember going into the changing room or anything. I can recall the goal and running away to celebrate with the fans. I think [Steven] Boyack was there, Janny [Neil Janczyk], Weiry [Graham Weir], [Andrew] Webster. That was a good Hearts team as well. 

"I've always preferred setting up goals than scoring. I always enjoyed assisting, taking my man on, getting a cross in and leading to a goal. Celebrating a goal, it was something I didn't know what to do. To this day I still wouldn't know what to do. I'd rather get to the goal line, pass it across and hopefully someone else would be there to put it in. I just had to run away and celebrate."

From a Hearts sperspective, it is long overdue for someone else to joins the ranks of Osman Sow, Jamie Hamill and Joe Hamill, heading towards the corner of Hearts fans to celebrate a winning goal for the men in maroon at Ibrox.