You have to be careful where you celebrate your goals it seems and avoid rubbing the opposition's fans noses in it.

Hibs midfielder Merouane Zemmama was the target of some wrath after he scored the third and decisive goal at Fir Park yesterday. He was guilty of celebrating in front of the home fans and was spoken to by the referee but the Morrocan claims somebody aimed a missile towards him later in the game. The incident happened in front of the East Stand after Zemmama scored from a 55th-minute free-kick. The Moroccan appeared to take evasive action as he went to take a corner in front of the same stand and referee Steve Conroy picked something up and put it in his pocket. Zemmama said: "They tried to hit me with a lighter or a whistle but they didn't. I touched it with my hand. I didn't mention anything to the Motherwell fans. I'm sorry if I stayed near them but I was just celebrating my goal and I didn't mean any harm." Zemmama appeared to carry on celebrating in front of the home fans while he was being warned by Conroy over his celebrations, but he claimed his raised arms were meant as an apology. He said: "I was saying sorry to the fans. The referee didn't book me, he just told me 'don't do it again'."

The incident failed to dampen Zemmama's joy at scoring on his first start since April 2008. He curled home the freee-kick from a difficult angle to catch John Ruddy out at his near post. His early counter-attack also helped set up Colin Nish's opener, which was cancelled out by Mark Reynolds' 35th-minute header. Motherwell looked to be in control either side of the break but Derek Riordan was given metres of space to put Hibs back in front in the 51st minute and the home side never recovered from Zemmama's goal four minutes later. Hibs manager. John Hughes, whose side are now second in the league, was delighted with his players' work rate. Hughes said: "The games we have lost we have not been competing well enough. We worked hard today and got our rewards. I felt Motherwell were better in terms of ball retention in the first half but with us on the counter and the attacking players at our disposal, I thought we could have scored more."

Motherwell manager, Jim Gannon was disappointed that some players did not play the way he had instructed. He said: "The manner in which we played in the first half, and getting the equalising goal, I thought if we tweaked a few things we would see an improvement. Unfortunately we saw some of the aspects I wasn't pleased about re-emerge. Once it went to 3-1, certain players lacked the experience to recover from a situation like that. I was a little disappointed that certain aspects that we worked on in training weren't evident, especially in terms of penetration down the flanks. There were times when the game was open and our players showed a poor choice of pass. We did look open when they counter-attacked but that wasn't a major worry of mine. If players play the shape the way I asked them to, there is always a strategy to defend the counter-attack. There were a couple of players who didn't fulfil what I wanted them to do and we looked vulnerable for it."
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