54 WWW.HEARTSFC.CO.UK
THE FINAL WORD
F
rom the recent series of games, it seems Hearts have improved only as the temperatures are dropping.
That has made for some uncomfortable half-times but the second-half moves from back-foot-to-front has made it a decent fortnight. In the St Mirren match we once again had a side who, by their own admission, played some of their best stuff of the season and although Hearts were off the pace, they stepped up in the second period to claim a – in the end – convincing win. Five days later I reckon Hearts could win back-to-back World Cups and we still wouldn’t be confident of a result at Celtic Park. However, we did seem to play with an air of confidence that is not always with us in the East End and on another night things may have fallen differently. It certainly underlined the need for not only key decisions to go your way but also to take your chances. And then to Sunday where it was a complete contrast to Parkhead with the Hearts support making up 80% of the crowd. Again,
we were off the pace in the first-half and although we only conceded maybe four chances to Livi’ to do so in the space of less than a minute(!) saw Craig Gordon called into heroic action once more. Second-half, lo-and-behold, we start playing as we should; much further up the park and could have won more convincingly on another day. That’s all led to a decent return of six points from nine and whilst we’ll need a full ninetyminute performance today it has cemented our current position of third and ensured that confidence remains high at Tynecastle. Hearts versus Rangers is a classic staple of the Scottish football calendar - right from the opening day of the first ever League season in 1890-91. (And despite my son’s suggestion no, I wasn’t there.) Of course, our results against Rangers can definitely be filed under ‘mixed’ at best especially at Ibrox but nonetheless there are some good memories. In the St Mirren programme, I mentioned Robbo’s last minute-
Scott Cockburn
equaliser in 1984 as one of my first recollections of Tynecastle but at the end of that season I also vaguely remember Kevin Keegan playing in maroon against Rangers for Alex MacDonald’s Testimonial. Pre-match some man in the middle with a microphone was receiving dog’s abuse from the Shed. I later learned it was someone called Andy Cameron. Moving forward we had a terrific series of results in the mid-nineties with the fantastic 4-2 win in the Scottish Cup complete with the foraging Dave McPherson - in 1995, Allan Johnston’s hat-trick at Ibrox a year later and then at the end of 1996-97 John Robertson broke the League scoring record with a double on the final day in a 3-1 win. Earlier that season we’d also managed to squeeze in a 3-0 defeat at Ibrox despite ending the match with only seven men. Rangers had the advantage of starting with 12 it seemed. However, it would be fair to say that Rangers hit the new SPL-era with even more money and that results began to fade. In fact,
