What a difference a month makes for fans of Hearts - Vladimir McTavish
While everyone else in Scottish football is treating June as one huge party, on both sides of the Pond, let’s spare a thought for our friends who are Hearts fans.
This has to be the most bittersweet of months for them. A mere five weeks ago, they were only three minutes away from winning the league, only to fall at the very final hurdle, victory snatched from their grasp by Celtic.
However, they were told this was not the end, rather the start of something big, and that a bright future lay ahead.
How different things must seem now, as the supporters struggle with the fact that their club has been royally shafted by two of the most prominent architects of that near thing, who now head off to their own futures at Rangers, that bright Hearts future forgotten.
Jambos must be left feeling abandoned, confused but most of all angry. Yet who should they be angriest at?
A month a go, it was Celtic who were the devil incarnate. I suspect much of that has already faded into distant memory, alleged misdeeds on the pitch being trumped by treachery off the park.
Should they be raging at Rangers? The Ibrox club resorted to their old playbook from the late eighties and early nineties.
Back then, they would routinely hoover up all the major talent in Scotland, some of whom actually ended up playing for them. The rest were put in the reserves.
OK, they might not have been getting a game for Rangers but they sure as hell weren’t getting a game for anyone else, seemed to be the logic.
The club had so much money, they could afford it. Yet even in those days, they never asset-stripped their closets rivals, swooping to sign their captain and manager in a matter of weeks.
What then of Lawrence Shankland? He has given four seasons’ sterling service to Hearts, scoring any number of crucial goals for the club in good times and bad. He stepped in to fill the void as captain when Craig Gordon was so cruelly injured.
So, on the surface, few would begrudge him a move to a higher wage elsewhere. To the English Premier League or Europe maybe? But to Rangers, a club they had just fought in that classic three-way title race?
It turns out he is a lifetime Rangers fan. They were his ”boyhood club”. Ah, that old chestnut! Footballers seem to think normal rules don’t apply if they are signing for their “boyhood club”.
I’m a Celtic fan. They are my “boyhood club”. As a professional comedian, I have provided entertainment for many other clubs in Scotland.
I wouldn’t expect it to be well-received if I were to take the mic at Easter Road and say “sorry, I can’t do this gig anymore, I’ve just been asked to do a dinner at Celtic tonight, and they were my boyhood.....”. I’d be lucky to escape alive.
As for Derek Macinnes? Guiltiest of them all. Only manager for one season in which he promised a lot and nearly delivered. He jumped ship at the first chance. To Rangers. Appalling treachery. Even if they were his “boyhood club”.
Something big was being built at Tynecastle. You can see for yourself next season. At Ibrox!