Craig Halkett has had a torrid time with injuries over the last 18 months.

The Heart of Midlothian defender was forced to have surgery on a knee issue earlier this year soon after recovering from a cruciate ligament injury.

After completing his first pre-season since 2022, the 28-year-old has started three of Hearts’ eight matches so far this season, including the last two.

Here is what the Hearts centre-back told the media on Friday afternoon ahead of Saturday's trip to face St Mirren in the Scottish Premiership:

First of all, how are you feeling now, being back in and getting a couple of games under your belt after what's been a fairly dramatic couple of years for you?
"It's been 18 months, two years, it's been difficult and stop-start. But this season's been good. It's the first year in a couple of seasons I've had a full pre-season, feeling fit and feeling ready to go. Obviously the start of the season for myself was a bit difficult. I knew it was going to be with how well the boys did last year. It was just about speaking to the manager, seeing where I stood, and just kind of biding my time and waiting for the opportunity to come in. It came in the last couple of games and although the results haven't gone our way, it was good to get back and get a couple of 90 minutes under my belt and feel like I'm trying to be in the team."

How difficult is it to get that much fitness back after being out for so long?
"Yeah, it's really hard. You can train and do as much extras as you like, but that match sharpness is just something that can only come with games. Not so much just fitness, it's more just about the wee things that happen in games - reactions, mentally being in the positions when it happens. So there are still another couple of games away from me feeling like I'm 100 per cent, but I'm getting there."

It's a run of defeats though, I think it's unparalleled in your time here. How do you address that and how much does that impact on the confidence within the squad?
"The confidence is obviously not as high as what it would be if we were winning games and picking up points, but it's something we're all working really hard on and we all want the same goal, players, coaches, fans, everyone at the club. But when we come in at the start of the week we're working hard, we're watching a lot of the games back and seeing what we're doing right and the things that we can improve on to make sure we go and start picking up some points."

And with each defeat comes more pressure, mainly on the manager, do the players feel a responsibility there as well?
"I think just as a group collectively we all know what the goal is and we want to win games of football. We've not been doing that at the start. Obviously pressure is there when you're at Hearts, you've got pressure every single game no matter whether you're winning or you're losing. So we all know what the situation is, but we're all confident that we've got the quality of squad in that changing room that we can go and turn it around."

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Given the success for last season, do you think teams are now looking at Hearts in a different light and possibly adjusting to try and stop Hearts playing?
"I think  just in general Hearts is one of the biggest clubs in Scotland and I think teams will maybe come in and give you a wee bit more respect. But I think off the back of last year and how well we've done, teams could potentially - I don't know, I'm not part of the teams - they could potentially set up a wee bit different. But again that's up to us to find a way to break that down and change a couple of things on our end to make sure we can go and get the win and that's hopefully what we'll do on Saturday."

Experienced poor runs like this over your time with Hearts, what can be the catalyst for getting out of them? Do you see similarities with the running results just now from other times when Hearts have struggled to get results?
"Not really similarities, I think it's just one of the things. There's wee moments in games that fall your way or don't fall your way and they seem to not be falling our way at the moment. Whether it's a scrappy goal or a referee's decision or whatever it is, but again it's just up to us to keep doing what we're doing on the training pitch, working on it all week and putting it in place on a Saturday and eventually we all know in there that we're doing the right thing. It will turn."

Could it be difficult or do you have to work hard to keep the dressing room together when things are going against you like that?
"I don't think so, we've got a great group down there and I don't think it's a case of working harder because we're all working as hard as we can every day, the manager emphasises that and training's been really good most weeks and it's just coming a Saturday and we're just coming a little bit short. So again it's just if we keep doing what we're doing I'm sure it will turn."

When the results don't go your way, there is a lot of external noise, how much do the players hear about that, think about it, or is it just blocking that out and focusing on football?
"It's a bit of both, to be honest. You don't want to just ignore what everyone's saying and you want to take it on board. It's just up to us to when it comes to the weekend just block it out and do what we've worked on all game and when that comes the general persona of what everyone's thinking starts to change and the mood lifts everywhere, fans, players, coaches, everything and we start going on a run. So I think it's just getting that first win hopefully at the weekend and then things will turn from there."