How Hearts lost their heart

I developed a serious interest in football in 1953 when I started to go to matches at Charlton with my father.   As my knowledge of the game developed, it became apparent that Scottish clubs often did not have obvious geographical names like their English counterparts.   Given his Scottish ancestry, my father made sure that I followed football north of the border.

I developed a serious interest in football in 1953 when I started to go to matches at Charlton with my father.   As my knowledge of the game developed, it became apparent that Scottish clubs often did not have obvious geographical names like their English counterparts.   Given his Scottish ancestry, my father made sure that I followed football north of the border.

One of the first clubs that came to my attention in Scotland was Hearts.   Given that there were also clubs called evocatively Queen of the South and Queens Park, I mistakenly thought they were Queen of Hearts, rather than Heart of Midlothian.

As it so happens,  the decade from 1954 to 1963 was the most successful period in the Edinburgh club’s history.   They won the league twice, the Scottish Cup and the league cup four times.   But it was always going be difficult to keep up with the Glasgow giants and they went into something of a decline.  Less than six months ago 100,000 people lined the streets of Edinburgh to commemorate their victory in the first all-Edinburgh final for 116 years.   Yet now the very existence of the club formed in 1874 is under threat.

In 2005 Chris Robinson decided to sell up and Kaunas-based businessman Vladimir Romanov took over.  He kept the club at Tynecastle.   Debts were run up, but as the money was owed to Romanov’s bank, it was said it was like owing yourself money.

That was fine in a bubble economy, but then the global financial crisis struck and it hit the Baltic states particularly hard.   A process of cuts began as it became clear that an annual wage bill of around £10m was not sustainable.   Romanov said a year ago that he wanted out and wanted offers for Hearts.  None came.

Even with Rangers in the third division, a highly indebted Scottish club is not an attractive prospect. One could acquire a club in the English Championship instead and hope for promotion to the Premier League.

Yet Edinburgh with only one senior club is unthinkable (there was a third when Meadowbank Thistle played in front of a crowd largely made up of family and friends of the players).    If Dundee can sustain two clubs on the same road, then Edinburgh can surely justify having two clubs in different locations.

Some solution will surely be found, but it is not easy to see where it will come from.    Could Hearts also end up in the bottom tier of Scottish football?