This Hearts story did not begin with Stuart Findlay’s late winner at Tannadice in August, a stoppage-time intervention from Alexandros Kyziridis against Livingston later that month or the September victory at Ibrox that materially fuelled belief among Derek McInnes’s squad. Brian Cormack, Alex Mackie, Jamie Bryant, Donald Ford and Garry Halliday will not feature in the Hearts team seeking to create history at Celtic Park but that quintet set this club on a path that after 16 years has almost – though only almost – reached the ultimate glory point.
Cormack and Mackie joked back then, when among a group establishing the Foundation of Hearts, that one day they would watch the team they love compete in the Champions League from a new main stand at Tynecastle Park. With the stand complete, Hearts will enter the Champions League’s qualifying phase this summer. Humour proved prescient. In the west of Edinburgh, as Hearts pursue the point they need in Glasgow on Saturday to win the title for the first time since 1960, original FoH directors will gather to watch together. Their role in Hearts’ rise should never be forgotten.
In 2010, Hearts were under the erratic and later almost ruinous ownership of Vladimir Romanov. Five men had a plan. The FoH encountered naysayers, including from one individual who has reached a prominent position within Scottish football, with regards to their idea to shift Hearts towards supporter ownership. Enter Ann Budge, whose loan allowed FoH to extricate Hearts from administration. There have been bumps in the road, occasionally significant ones, since that transaction in the summer of 2013. However, not only are Hearts owned by the Foundation and its 9,000 members but one other stated ambition of those who established the group has been reached. Hearts are an investable, reputable business, backed after Budge by the Edinburgh philanthropist James Anderson and, much more recently, Tony Bloom. A serious club, run by serious people, deploying serious footballers.
They sing Bloom’s name at Hearts games these days. After the recent victory over Rangers, Bloom quaffed with giddy punters in the Tynecastle Arms. A third of a mile away the Athletic Arms was reporting a day of record takings, duly surpassed by Wednesday and the occasion of Hearts beating Falkirk to take the Scottish title race to game 38 of 38. The Hearts ticket allocation at Celtic is only 752; pubs in Gorgie will again be filled to capacity.
“We all understand who we represent,” says McInnes, the manager. “You’ve seen the emotion in the stadium all season but particularly of late when people started to believe that this could actually happen. We understand this is a huge club. We are not as huge as the team we’re playing and everything that goes with that in terms of finances and all the rest of it. We have been an underdog.
“The odds will tell you at the start of the season Hearts won’t win the league and nobody would really bet on Hearts to win the league. But at this stage of the season we’ve got a belief that we can do it. Of course we can. We know there’s a lot of goodwill towards us trying to win the league and hopefully we can go and do it.
“The good thing for me is the confidence I feel in the players is so strong. We have to go there with courage, we have to go there with belief and be bullish with our work. I think they’ll always be regarded as a special team. But obviously if we want to elevate that. We have to go and win it.” McInnes’s tone at Hearts has consistently been pitch-perfect.
Bloom’s near-£10m funding of Hearts was important. More so, though, was his language last summer. Bloom’s assertion that he could disrupt the Scottish game instantly caught the imagination of a supporter base who had been moulded into a mindset that title challenges were impossible. McInnes determined after two rounds of fixtures that his players could go the distance; and told them as much.
“It’ll be bedlam, it’ll be an unbelievable atmosphere just because of what’s at stake,” says McInnes of the final day. “There might be people out there who think everything’s back on script, Celtic win their home game, win the league, and that’s what Celtic have done for the last wee while. They’ve been the team that win more titles but we’ve ripped the script up so often this season and we’ve got one more in us I think. It’s up to us to try and make that happen.”
Gary Mackay’s terrific goal for Hearts against Clydebank in the penultimate game of the 1985-86 league season triggered a verse of “Championees” from the Tynecastle terracing. There has been no repeat of the chant, especially this season. No one wants to tempt fate. On the following Saturday 40 years ago, Hearts’ dreams were shattered by two Dundee goals in the last seven minutes at Dens Park. Then, as now, Hearts needed a draw to be champions. Then, as now, Celtic were the other team in the title frame in the midst of an excellent run of form. There is a reason Hearts had a long-running fanzine named Always The Bridesmaid.
Fairytales do not win trophies. Fairytales are also not solely the domain of Hearts. Martin O’Neill, at 74 and in a second interim managerial spell in one season at Celtic, will complete a sensational personal triumph should his team retain the flag. In a world of laptop coaching and training-ground flannel, O’Neill’s straightforward approach has been welcome. Neutrals who will cheer for Hearts should realise Celtic are the odds-on favourites.
“Martin has done an unbelievable job,” says McInnes. “The Celtic board made a brilliant decision in bringing him back. I don’t know if there’s anybody else, certainly very few, who’d be able to navigate them back into this position. It’s the players, obviously, but Martin deserves a lot of credit for that. He’ll probably put that on the players, knowing him. He’s a fine man, he’s done a brilliant job, and we shouldn’t be surprised that Celtic have got themselves into this position and a chance to regain their title by winning.”
This has been no ordinary Celtic season. The very game where McInnes sensed an attitude change and swagger in the Hearts team, the 3-1 defeat of Celtic in late October, proved Brendan Rodgers’ last as the manager. Rodgers departed with stinging – and over the top – criticism from Celtic’s main shareholder, Dermot Desmond. There has been dispute between boardroom and supporter base, a chair’s resignation owing to abuse, the appointment of the worst manager in Celtic’s history in Wilfried Nancy and a January transfer window that optimists would describe as awful.
O’Neill has managed not only to outperform Rangers and a £40m Ibrox spend but, with a Scottish Cup final against Dunfermline to come, stands on the verge of a domestic double. O’Neill has an itch to scratch, having lost leagues on the final day of the season in 2003 and 2005 during his first Celtic tenure. This Celtic squad, which will be subject to a summer overhaul, fancies a last hurrah.
McInnes has a Scottish managerial icon in his corner. Sir Alex Ferguson apparently does not care that his record of being the last manager to win a title for a club other than Celtic or Rangers, with Aberdeen in 1985, may be broken. Instead, Ferguson has bought fully into a scenario he once revelled in, that of giving the Glasgow giants a bloody nose. “He sent me a brilliant message yesterday morning,” McInnes says. “A brilliant message, actually. I took a lot from that and I’ll no doubt speak to him before the game.”
On 16 May 1998, Hearts ended a tortuous 36-year wait for a major honour courtesy of an exhausting Scottish Cup final win over Rangers at Celtic Park. Grown men in maroon shed tears of joy. On 16 May 2026, at the same venue, McInnes and his players will stand on the verge of footballing immortality. They form part of a much bigger, endearing picture.
