The Edinburgh Reporter April 2021

23
Hearts: The real risk of
apathy and indifference
Kelty Hearts
manager,
Barry
Ferguson
Brora Rangers Scottish Cup fiasco was possibly the nadir
By DUNCAN ROBERTSON
IT’S BEEN A FUNNY old season for
Hearts. They sit neatly at the top of the
Championship table, blazing a superior
points per game ratio to Hibs and
Rangers’ previous title winning seasons.
They knocked out Hibs once again at
Hampden and took the quadruple treble
chasing Celtic to the last kick of the game
in the Scottish Cup final. However, there’s
major gloom hovering over Tynecastle
and it poses a big risk to the club and
Ann Budge’s ongoing tutelage.
It’s not hard to point at the source of
this despair. Shamefully the Jambos have
crashed out of both cup competitions in
the early stages to part-time challengers
– of course, most recently to Highland
League Champions Brora Rangers in a
scandal of a result last month.
Secondly, Robbie Neilson, brought in
to deliver promotion at the start of the
season, has presided over some dull
performances that, although arguably
effective based on the league table, have
been a tiresome watch for the Jambos
faithful via a further frustrating internet
streaming experience.
What does this all mean though? Many
Hearts fans are worryingly moving into
the space of shrugged shoulders and
irrelevance. They argue we’ve been in this
decline for some time and not much is a
surprise – Brora was perhaps the nadir.
This is a major concern and should be
ringing the alarm bells in Tynecastle’s
boardroom, virtual or not, for a variety
of reasons.
Of course, being forced into watching
on laptops and tablets is not Neilson or
Budge’s fault – however, the necessary
fact does bring some potential
implications.
The pandemic has taught us that
society’s habits change. We’ve been forced
to use Zoom for work and play, masses
have switched to online shopping, many
are moving out of cities. So, will
thousands of Hearts fans snap up their
season tickets for the 2021/22 campaign?
After more than a year away, will the
prospect of travelling once again to
Gorgie to watch a turgid Hearts side
appeal? A packed and vocal Tynecastle
Park, with all the revenue and
palpable passion that brings, is pretty
intrinsic to the club’s future progress
and ambitions.
This is of course assuming Robbie
Neilson remains in charge and whilst
this is obviously not a given, judging
Ann Budge by her track record it seems
likely. Indeed, her actions perhaps fan the
irrelevance further with the prolonged
Craig Levein sacking a concerning
exemplar of sucking life and energy out
of an ever increasingly alienated fanbase.
The Foundation of Hearts are due to
take ownership of the club very shortly.
There appears minimal appetite for
members to cease or drop their
subscriptions – this seems rightly
disconnected from the current
footballing operation. The handover,
whilst a major milestone and something
to be rightly celebrated given the journey
from administration, does leave the
famous club at a particular crossroads in
how it goes about its business.
Robbie Neilson
Ian Jacobs
Plans to crown
Kelty Hearts
champs again
THE SCOTTISH Lowland Football
League looks set to crown Kelty
Hearts champions after the league
board sent out a proposal to clubs
to end their season.
Edinburgh clubs Spartans, Bonnyrigg
Rose and Civil Service Strollers all take
part in the league which is in the fifth
tier of the Scottish pyramid but has
been suspended from playing since
the latest lockdown was introduced
in December.
It’s understood clubs were asked to
support the proposal of ending the
league on a points-per-games basis due
to prohibitive costs of PCR testing which
they would need to undertake if they
were to return before the 17 May, the
date set by the Scottish Government.
Under the proposal Barry Ferguson’s
team, Kelty Hearts, would be named
champions, for the second season on
the bounce, and put forward to take
part in the pyramid play-off.
The Highland League are thinking of
adopting the same policy even though
only three fixtures were actually played.
This means that Brora Rangers, who
put Hearts to the sword in the Scottish
Cup, would become champions.
They would face Kelty in a repeat of
last year’s cancelled final.
Naysmith’s plumbing job stops him going round the bend
Gary
Naysmith
By DARREN JOHNSTONE
NEW EDINBURGH City manager Gary
Naysmith revealed how he took on a
delivery job for a plumbing company to
ensure his mental health did not suffer.
The former Scotland, Hearts and
Everton left-back returned to football
management at the ambitious League
2 outfit following a 21-month absence
from the dugout.
Naysmith’s most recent post was as a
Loans Manager at Tynecastle, but that
came to an end last June.
And amidst applying for roles in
football during the pandemic, former
Queen of the South and East Fife boss
Naysmith admits he helped distribute
toilet parts to make sure he had
something to occupy the void during
lockdown. Naysmith said: “As a football
player you are used to a routine, in the
morning you know what you are going
to do. During this time, I was just
getting up in the morning, I was not
even taking my boy to school because
he wasn’t going to school.
“You would go for a run, maybe do
the odds and ends like everybody,
go to Tesco.
“It’s like déjà vu. I am not saying I was
struggling with my mental health, but I
was thinking, ‘it’s the same again, same
again, same again’.
“During that time I got a wee driving
job doing some deliveries, that was
great, getting yourself out of the house.
“It was to keep myself busy but more
so for the mental side of it.
“When this wee job came up, just
delivering stuff for City Plumbing,
you were classed a key worker,
because maybe people had toilets
that were broken.
“That job allowed me to go out and
help people, but really I was helping
myself because it was giving me that
routine that was familiar to me my
whole life.
“I was not doing it for the money, I
was doing it to help me really, help me
be as familiar as I could in terms of a
routine and it worked out well for me.”
Naysmith, who earned 46 Scotland
caps, admits he must have left some of
his fellow road users confused when
they saw him in the van.
He added: “I didn’t drive every day, if
they needed me, they needed me but I
probably did it over a period of about
four months.
“It was quite funny, people see you in
the van and sometimes they would do
that double take, ‘is that Gary Naysmith
driving that van?’
“Some people might have said,
‘you’re silly, you could have sat in
the house’. “