Heart of Midlothian F.C.

• 1. Introduction

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  Heart of Midlothian Football Club was born from a dance. A group of friends from the Heart of Midlothian Quadrille Assembly Club watched their first game of association football in December 1873 at Raimes Park in Bonnington, and they were captivated. Within months they had formed a football club of their own, taking the name from a mosaic embedded in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, which marks the site of the Old Tolbooth jail, a prison demolished in 1817 but kept alive in public memory by Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian. The club is known simply as Hearts, and it is the oldest football club in the Scottish capital.

  What followed that dance-hall beginning was 150 years of football marked by extraordinary highs and devastating near-misses. Hearts have scored 132 goals in a single league season, a record that still stands. They sent sixteen players to war in 1914 and lost seven of them. A multimillionaire from Lithuania dismantled a century of stability in less than a decade. And on the final day of two separate seasons, Hearts were denied the Scottish league title by the narrowest of margins.

  This is the story of a club whose identity is inseparable from the city it calls home, from the mosaic on the Royal Mile to the war memorial at Haymarket, from the maroon jersey stained red to the fans who twice kept the club alive with their own money.

• 2. From Dance Hall to the Meadows

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  The earliest mention of Heart of Midlothian in a sporting context appears in The Scotsman newspaper from the 20th of July 1864, in a report of a cricket match. Whether this was the same club that went on to play football is not known, but it was common in those days for clubs to compete across several sports.

  After watching the Raimes Park game in December 1873, the quadrille club members chose to adopt association rules rather than the local mix of rugby and association football that had been common until then. They bought a ball, played initially from the Tron, and were directed by a local policeman to the Meadows. The exact date of formation was never recorded, though 1874 is accepted as the founding year because that was when the association rules were adopted. Tom Purdie, who led the club as captain and who had claimed the club was formed in 1873, later became one of its key figures.

  Hearts joined the Scottish Football Association in 1875 and became founder members of the Edinburgh Football Association the same year. Their first Scottish Cup match was against 3rd Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers F.C. in October 1875 at Craigmount Park. The game ended scoreless. A replay at the Meadows also finished 0-0, and under the rules of the time both clubs advanced, with Hearts eventually losing to Drumpellier in the next round.

  A decade later, in the 1884-85 season, Hearts became the first SFA club ever to be suspended. After an 11-1 win over Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup, a protest was raised for fielding two professional players, which was against the rules at the time. Hearts were suspended for two years and readmitted only after a change of the club's committee.

• 3. Early Glories and a World Championship

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  Hearts won the Scottish league championship in 1895 and again in 1897, during the early years of the Scottish Football League. They also claimed four Scottish Cups in a fifteen-year span from 1891 to 1906, establishing themselves as one of the dominant forces in Scottish football during that era.

  The club also competed in what was known as the Football World Championship. In 1895 they were runners-up, losing to Sunderland with a 5-3 score. Seven years later, in 1902, they won the title outright, beating Tottenham Hotspur 3-1 at Tynecastle Park after a 0-0 draw in London a few months earlier.

  By 1886, Hearts had settled at Tynecastle Park, their home to this day. Named for the Tynecastle Tollhouse at the entrance to the grounds of Merchiston, the stadium has hosted nine full Scotland international matches. The main stand, designed by Archibald Leitch, opened in 1919 and stood until it was demolished and replaced in 2017, bringing the ground's capacity to 20,099.

• 4. The 1914 Volunteers

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  In November 1914, Hearts were comfortably leading the First Division, having started the 1914-15 season with eight straight victories, including a 2-0 defeat of reigning champions Celtic. Then the weight of World War I arrived at the club's door.

  East London philanthropist Frederick Nicholas Charrington was leading a public campaign to have professional football in Britain suspended, using public and private denouncement to shame players and officials into action. Hearts' response was swift and collective. Sixteen players enlisted in Sir George McCrae's new volunteer battalion on the 25th of November 1914, joining en masse. The battalion became the 16th Royal Scots and was the first to earn the sobriquet "footballer's battalion". Joining the players were some 500 Hearts supporters and ticket-holders, 150 followers of Hibernian, and professional footballers from Raith Rovers, Falkirk, and Dunfermline.

  Military training was added to football training, and the side ran a 20-game unbeaten run between October and February. But the strain told. Exhaustion from 10-hour nocturnal marches the night before league games led to a drop in form. Defeats to St Mirren and Morton allowed Celtic to overtake Hearts and claim the title by four points.

  The war claimed the lives of seven first team players: Duncan Currie, John Allan, James Boyd, Tom Gracie, Ernest Ellis, James Speedie, and Harry Wattie, as well as former player David Philip. Two memorials mark the sacrifice: the McCrae's Battalion Great War Memorial in Contalmaison, and the Heart of Midlothian War Memorial at Haymarket in Edinburgh, which the club donated to the city in 1922. An annual pilgrimage to Contalmaison continues to this day, and Hearts hold memorial services at Haymarket or, when the memorial was in storage during tram works, at Tynecastle Park itself.

• 5. The Terrible Trio and Tommy Walker

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  On the 9th of October 1948, Hearts manager Davie McLean gave a competitive first team debut to 20-year-old centre forward Willie Bauld and 19-year-old inside left Jimmy Wardhaugh, while 22-year-old Alfie Conn Sr. had already broken into the side. Their first match together ended 6-1 against Scot Symon's East Fife, a team that had beaten Hearts 4-0 three weeks earlier. The Terrible Trio, as they became known, went on to score over 900 Hearts goals between them: Wardhaugh 376, Bauld 355, and Conn 221. As a unit they played 242 games together.

  A few weeks after that debut, in December 1948, Tommy Walker left his third season at Chelsea to return to Hearts. He had joined the Hearts ground staff aged 16 in February 1932. After McLean died on the 14th of February 1951, Walker was promoted to manager. What followed was the most successful period in the club's history.

  The infrastructure Walker inherited included the Terrible Trio, full backs Bobby Parker and Tam McKenzie, and half backs Bobby Dougan and Davie Laing. John Cumming had recently broken into the left half position, and a schoolboy named Dave Mackay was yet to make his debut. Mackay was signed as a professional under Walker in 1952, initially part-time while also working as a joiner. Cumming, whose "Iron Man" nickname reflected his fearless approach, was never booked in his entire career. Mackay later said of him: "He never had a bad game. It was either a fairly good game or an excellent game."

  The run of trophies began in October 1954 with a 4-2 win over Motherwell in the Scottish League Cup final, Hearts' first trophy in 48 years. Bauld scored three and Wardhaugh scored one. After signing Alex Young and Bobby Kirk, Walker's side won the 1956 Scottish Cup final 3-1 against Celtic before 132,840 fans. Cumming played through the second half with blood streaming from a head wound, having said, "Blood doesn't show on a maroon jersey." That quote now sits above the entrance to the players' tunnel at Tynecastle, and Cumming was named man of the match.

  The league championship of 1957-58 was Hearts' greatest ever season. With an injury-affected Bauld playing only nine times, a new attacking trio emerged. Wardhaugh was the league's top scorer with 28 goals, one ahead of Jimmy Murray's 27 and four ahead of Alex Young's 24. Hearts won 62 points from a possible 68, thirteen more than their nearest rival. They scored 132 goals with only 29 against, a goal difference of plus 103. Both figures remain Scottish top-flight records. Murray and Mackay played for Scotland at the 1958 FIFA World Cup, where Murray scored in a 1-1 draw against Yugoslavia.

  Under Walker, Hearts won seven senior trophies and were runners-up in five others. All four of their Scottish League Cup triumphs came under him. Cumming was the only player to collect medals for all seven. Walker resigned in September 1966, and was awarded the OBE for services to football in 1960.

• 6. Heartbreak on the Final Day

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  Hearts have twice been denied the Scottish league title on the last day of the season, and the two occasions are bound together by a bitter irony.

  In 1964-65, Hearts entered the final game three points clear of Kilmarnock. The two title challengers met each other at Tynecastle. Kilmarnock needed to win by two goals. Hearts' Roald Jensen hit the post after six minutes. Kilmarnock then scored twice, through Davie Sneddon and Brian McIlroy, after 27 and 29 minutes. Alan Gordon had a clear chance to equalise in injury time but was denied by a Bobby Ferguson diving save. Hearts lost 2-0 and the title by a goal average of 0.042. In the aftermath, Hearts were instrumental in pushing through a change that replaced goal average with goal difference to separate teams level on points.

  That rule change came back to haunt them. In 1985-86, after a 27-game unbeaten league run that had taken them to the top of the table on the 21st of December, Hearts needed only a draw at Dundee on the 3rd of May 1986 to win the title. Before the game they were two points ahead of Celtic with a superior goal difference of four goals. With seven minutes remaining, substitute Albert Kidd won a corner. The inswinging ball fell to Kidd, who scored. It was the first goal Hearts had conceded from a corner all season. Kidd then ran from the halfway line, played a one-two on the edge of the box, and scored again with four minutes left. Celtic won 5-0 against St Mirren. Hearts finished level on points with Celtic but lost the title by a goal difference of three.

  Had goal difference applied in 1965, Hearts would have won the title then. Had goal average still applied in 1986, they would have won it then. Their own successful lobbying after 1965 cost them the title in 1986. Hearts have finished league runners-up fifteen times in total.

• 7. Administration and Fan Ownership

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  Vladimir Romanov, a Russian-Lithuanian multimillionaire, entered talks to take over Hearts in August 2004, during a period of severe financial difficulty that had led previous chief executive Chris Robinson to announce plans to sell Tynecastle and rent Murrayfield from the Scottish Rugby Union. A campaign called Save Our Hearts formed to block the sale. Romanov offered to keep the club at a redeveloped Tynecastle, which proved decisive. By the 21st of October 2005 he had increased his shareholding to 55.5%, and eventually reached 82%.

  Romanov's stated aim was for Hearts to win the Champions League. The club reached the Champions League in 2006-07 but progressed only as far as the second qualifying round. Off the pitch, his management was marked by instability. He sacked George Burley the day after Hearts won their first eight league matches of the 2005-06 season, equalling the club record set in 1914. Romanov went through nine permanent managers in seven years. By the end of July 2007 the club carried £36 million in debt. On the 7th of November 2012 a court issued a winding-up order after Hearts failed to pay a tax bill on time.

  On the 17th of June 2013, with debts of £25 million, Hearts entered administration. Administrator Trevor Birch appealed to supporters to buy season tickets; they needed to sell at least 3,000 more to raise £800,000 and avoid liquidation. Fans bought enough to push total season ticket sales beyond 10,000. A supporters group called the Foundation of Hearts, backed by monthly direct debit donations from fans and an interest-free loan from a wealthy supporter, was eventually given preferred bidder status. On the 12th of May 2014, Ann Budge fronted the Bidco 1874 group that took control of the club, ending Romanov's involvement. Hearts officially exited administration on the 11th of June 2014.

  The Foundation later paid £2.6 million for 75% of the club's shares and committed a further £2.8 million in working capital, with funding drawn from more than 8,000 monthly donors. On the 30th of August 2021, Budge officially transferred the club's shares to the Foundation, making Hearts the biggest fan-owned club in the United Kingdom at that time.

• 8. Edinburgh's Derby and Popular Culture

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  Hearts and Hibernian first met on Christmas Day 1875, when Hearts won 1-0 in the first competitive match Hibs ever played. The Edinburgh derby is one of the oldest club rivalries in world football. The two clubs' fiercest early contest was a five-game struggle for the Edinburgh Football Association Cup in 1878, which Hearts finally won 3-2 after four successive draws.

  The clubs have met twice in Scottish Cup finals. Hearts won 3-1 in 1896, in the only Scottish Cup final ever played outside Glasgow, and 5-1 in 2012. Hibs recorded the biggest derby win in competitive play when they won 7-0 at Tynecastle on New Year's Day 1973. From April 1989 to April 1994, Hearts went 22 Edinburgh derby matches without defeat.

  The geography of Edinburgh has always defined the rivalry's support base more than religion or ethnicity. Hibs have traditionally drawn from Leith and the north and east of the city; Hearts from the rest of Edinburgh. The rivalry is described as largely good-natured. Graham Spiers has called the derby "one of the jewels of the Scottish game."

  Hearts have made several appearances in popular culture. The American comedy-drama series Succession featured the club across two episodes, "Dundee" and "DC", in a storyline where Roman Roy buys Hearts to impress his Scottish-born billionaire father Logan Roy, only to discover that Logan supports Hibernian. In the 2022 film Aftersun, Sophie is seen wearing a 1998-99 Hearts shirt on more than one occasion. The Grove Street Families and the Ballas in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas wear green and maroon, and since developer Rockstar North is based in Edinburgh, fans have long believed this is a reference to Hearts and Hibs. The highest transfer fee Hearts have ever received was £9 million, paid by Sunderland for goalkeeper Craig Gordon in 2007, who also holds the club record for most international caps with 83 appearances for Scotland.