LONDON HEARTS . . . INFO-TAINMENT AT ITS MOST INFO-TAINING!

It’s been another fine year for London Hearts and the Heart of Midlothian generally. Hearts’ level of League consistency and performance has been encouraging on many levels, and Hearts supporters everywhere have been cheered as well as been cheering in the face of some doubters. Hearts will find it harder to keep improving at a similar rate; historically few teams can sustain a high ranking over the course of two seasons, let alone five, so it should be even more important that fans are patient when things go wrong: that way the rewards are so much higher when things go right. Things aren’t brilliant for Hearts, and may never be again: the level of debt in Scottish football still threatens to be unmanageable.

However, things are Not Bad (especially compared to the exploding clown’s car that was Hibs’ season) and there were moments of never-to-be-forgotten brilliance, so it would be quite wrong of us not to wallow. Hibs.net’s Stuart Crowther says that gloating is the one thing Hearts fans are good at. That’s presumably because we get so much practice, old son...

That’s the way we like it. Although little has happened in way of change from last year to this, the 2003 AGM was held in Matsuri, London SW, where copious quantities of blowfish and Suntory prompted the Secretary to take the minutes in haiku:

Heart of Midlothian
A football team, yet much more
Reflected in dreams

Neither class nor style
Always denied, no Cup win
Such is Hibernian

It certainly blew London Hibs’ Burns Supper out of the water – honestly, how many free dinners does Jimmy O’Rourke need? And now that Pat Stanton’s been withdrawn from the Easter Road matchday hospitality squad as a result of cutbacks he’ll be returning to the Desperately Seeking Functions and Engagements circuit. And if you think that’s an outrageous slur, you should hear him speak after a couple of liveners!

The technological revolution which allows you to read this has rather stymied London Hearts as it was originally constituted: early meetings were the only point of contact for us right-thinking football fans where news and views would be invented and exchanged, a copy of the Daily Record would change hands for three-figure sums, tickets for important matches were obtained via the Supporters’ Club Federation (there’s a free t-shirt to anyone who knows the connection between Heart of Midlothian and John McEnroe!) and discounted group travel arrangements would be debated at some length. It’s all different now. Members now have access to the club’s season tickets, and travel is cheaper and easier. There was no such thing as cheap rail tickets for an individual fifteen years ago, apart from the jaw-droppingly cheap NightRider, a single fare costing a mere pounds 22 on a train consisting of eight first-class carriages, most of them empty, and a ninth carriage which was the all-nite buffet. This one was usually full, and no amount of alcohol or snack sales could offset the massive loss these trains must have generated. However, you can get up and down for pounds 36 nowadays, and there are even better deals if, as London Hearts does, you still prefer yer Champagne breakfasts in First Class.

In them there days, long before the Inter-Nette Rotary Combustion Machine, London Hearts had its very own Secrets and Lies publication (hats off to Derek Murray who was the man behind it all) which was sent out on a monthly basis, badly-printed, wrongly-stapled, but there were match reports, club news, a prize quiz and a monthly cartoon strip featuring Gary Mackay or Walter Kidd. At some point When there was no time to fill a page, we printed a blank page entitled “Wallace Mercer – An Appreciation” – and in 1988 even allowed a Hibby pal to write Why Hibs Are So Good, proving that our cracking sense of humour has never been quite as good as theirs, and they continue to make us laugh out loud to the present day.

It’s not that surprising that so many unofficial London Hearts meetings are held in Edinburgh before and after matches because, aside from the fact that members do up-sticks and return home (and who’s blaming them?) Edinburgh is where Hearts play, and for some members in the south of England it’s as easy to get to Edinburgh on a weekend than to a Paddington pub on a Monday evening. London Hearts is about following our team and isn’t a rendez-vous for lonely exiles like the Polish Club in W6 or those chess cafes in Paris full of disaffected Iranians. But that is not to say we haven’t enjoyed the fine hospitality of London hostelries, most particularly the Rob Roy where we have witnessed two run-of-the-mill everyday victories over Hibernian on the telly (who was it that put “Sunday Bloody Sunday” on the jukebox afterwards?) and where on August 11th last, God Bless Him, sat one Irvine Welsh. He stayed till five past Caig and departed shortly afterwards. I understand that he’s in America now – nae wonder. You could go round the world if air miles were awarded for every chuckle we’ve enjoyed at Hibs these last few years. They continue to resemble one of those nodding birds so popular in the 1970s – they nod, and nod, and nod, and nod, and every 27 years they wet their beak with a good derby result. Back to the top, and they start nodding again.

We’ve travelled far, though rarely by bus and car, and thankfully Perth and Paisley haven’t been on the itinerary. This season various LH oddfellows have been at Dundee, Partick, Kilmarnock, Dunfermline, Falkirk (hee hee! what a laff) and a Cup Semi Final at Hampden, whilst missionaries from our congregation have also been beyond the Arctic Circle in Finland (well, a fair bit below it, come to think of it, with temperatures in the 80s) to convert the heathens with sugared coloured candy a week before Hibs went to sell them snake oil. With any luck, Europe will be the real deal next year and we might give ourselves a chance of winning the Cup semi next time round rather than looking lost in the forest. Whatever, wherever, London Hearts will be there, because that’s what we do - follow the Hearts. (As long as it’s not bloody Moldavia. I’ve see it, and it’s a dump.)

London Hearts need no lessons from Rod Petrie in poor housekeeping. In exchange for a brown beer voucher members get very little back other than the honour and prestige of belonging to the Smartest-Bear Hearts Supporters’ Club (south of Manchester section). You get a free No Idle Talk an’ all, while a monthly lottery gives everyone the chance to win some frankly astonishing prizes. If you don’t believe me, come along to a meeting and take a look at the faces of the winners. The pool team continues to play a different version of the game known to the rest of mankind and at least one of its number wears his glasses back-to-front like Fred Scuttle rather than upside down like Dennis Taylor. However, the very notion of playing football in London on a Sunday rather than watching the game in Edinburgh on Saturday runs contrary to the charter of London Hearts. There was a time when a few of us did both (possibly just to get under a shower having got off the overnight Milk train a few hours earlier) but thems days is gone, so in response to the lack of a London Hearts Supporters’ Club football team noted by some taunting London Hibby with two APFSCIL Cup Runners-Up medals to his name (imitation obviously being the sincerest form of flattery) I say we would rather watch a team that is better than the one we play in. Sadly we cannot claim any celebrities as members, but we can boast that none of us is helping the police with their enquiries.

This website in no way reflects the opinions of London Hearts as an organisation and only of those who design it. It reveres the history of Heart of Midlothian but gives an appreciative nod to Scottish football history in general - particularly Leith Athletic and St Bernards – but truly, there have been Rangers and Celtic sides which have brought credit to Scotland and, as importantly, themselves. (Mayhap we’ll never see their like again.) On the other hand, an auld worthy once told me that George Young was a dirty bastard who should be expelled from the SFA Hall of Fame, along with Maurice Malpas and Ernie Walker. We wish to invoke the spirit of Bobby Walker, Barney Battles, ‘King’ Willie Bauld and the Golden Vision Alex Young), but particularly the host of lesser-known players who have graced the maroon (and the white). More recent heroes will become legends in good time – we all know who they are. But Hearts are blessed with a glorious history that can too easily concentrate on the great names and ignore such as Archie Kelly, Charlie Wipfler and Alfie Pope. And whilst it would be wrong to be proud simply because Hearts players were the first to offer themselves to the service of their country in 1914 – there were many brave men from other clubs who followed suit shortly afterwards – equally this unblinking sacrifice by players and staff connected with the Heart of Midlothian will never be forgotten. www.LondonHearts.com is indebted to all its contributors, but a special thank-you must go to Ian Grant, one of the founder-members of the Legendary Viva Hearts Supporters’ Club, for some marvellous historical material including photies which he probably took himself with his box brownie back in nineteen-oatcake. God help him if he smoked all those cigarettes himself.

It wouldn’t be fair, however, to entirely dismiss the utterly frivolous side of the site borne from the dark invention of the minds at play in the Gorgie Rool, EH11, where the ammunition that Hibernian FC keep supplying is shot out of our Johnny Seven right back in their collective face. The Brains Trust that is known as the Chief Grouser is a strange amalgam of the brothers Goldie (the Coen brothers of HMFC – or are they the Farrellys?), Mssrs Allan, Smith, Mackay, Hughes and Herbertson – ie, any old drunk with an opinion. If anyone wants to step up to the boxing booth and survive three rounds with the Chief Grouser they’ll win a t-shirt, but A Warning: most nearly everything said at the end of last season proved 102% correct, and the Chief can argue his way out of a paper bag, the reinforced sort you get your chips in - so you’d better be good. The website provides the statistics to back up the opinion: it’s a public service. If anyone’s got a Hibernian-related query or problem, Dr Knowledge can soon provide the answer. Like for instance, why do Hibs only employ managers with the word “Turmoil” written on their forehead?


Turmoil	Turmoil	le Turmoil	I fear very little change

Answer – it saves having to write it on later. And did you know that Alan Ormen joined Hibs in the hope that he might add to his collection of Cup runners-up medals having already got one with Admira Wacker in Austria? Did you know that Henry Smith saved Brian Hamilton’s penalty because Hamilton’s previous successful spot-kick was outlined in diagram form in that day’s match programme? Did you know the last Hibernian player to score the winning goal in a Scottish Cup Final is Arthur Duncan? (And - more to the point - he will remain so forever. Does that make him a legend?)

The London Hearts mission to inform and entertain will continue. There are various other projects in hand for the benefit of Hearts supporters everywhere: soon we will be producing a database of all Hearts games on video (and their availability: one of our best meetings this year witnessed the goals from the 6 – 5 game and the most famous 5 – 1 victory before last August, as well as Brian Whittaker getting sent off at Rugby Park in 1987); hopefully we will be able to publish the very finest compilation from the Golden Age of fanzines, including the legendary Still Mustn’t Grumble (“the fanzine most workshy Morton fans prefer”) and the sublime Gorgie Wave; and early next year we hope to hold a pool competition to commemorate London Hearts’ favourite son, the late Alan Thomson. He is still missed, but warmly remembered.

“Face it Simon, Hibs are your addiction, 1973’s your crack, and the pipe is welded to your lips” - London Hearts this year is indebted to the impetus provided by Mr Simon Pia, whose weekly diary in The Scotsman is as empty as any Hibs fan’s should be, and whose football reporting has been as green as something very green in the Emerald City overgrown with weeds. His report on the Kilmarnock v Hibs game last December was a classic, ignoring Kilmarnock’s victory but choosing to bang on about Jim Jefferies’ days as a player for Hearts as though it was relevant to anyone other than himself. (Sadly Simon wasn’t at Rugby Park for the 6-2 game in April). Having pointed at the target on his chest he found himself speared with London Hearts arrows like St Sebastian. The opening line of this paragraph was one e-mail to which he responded but “In the immortal words of the immortal Roy Keane, you can stick it up your bollocks” was one to which he didn’t. London Hearts’ crusade this year has been to dispel and crush the ludicrous notion that Hibernian FC have a tradition of playing glorious classy football when Heart of Midlothian have not. (1958 – dreary old season, nae flair, like…) This idea was invented in the mid-1970s by Hibs fans (just about the last time Hibs were Any Good) and perpetuated by Hibs journalists who were impressionable pubescents in 1973. I entirely understand their reticence to celebrate much of the last thirty years, but it tells you everything about Hibs fans that they talk incessantly about 7-0 but completely ignore their admittedly impressive 2-1 League Cup victory over Celtic. Hibs deserve credit where it’s due, but their account is currently closed.

To repeat: it’s been a great year for London Hearts, from Turku in July to Tynecastle in May. And the prospect of a decent football squad, all playing for each other, playing for Levein, Houston and McGlynn, playing for the fans, but most important, playing for themselves is something to savour for the next few months. Craig Levein has made it his mission to get his footballer to play the football they are capable of, which isn’t often easy in the spl. It is going to be even less easy next season as expectations will be heightened, and Hearts fans are well known for reaching for the sky one minute and for their revolver the next. It will be disappointing if Hearts get off to a dodgy start in August, but it will be doubly disappointing if those who are now singing the team’s praises turn on them and declare they’d never thought Levein was any good. We’re in for the long haul, sports fans.
Message: Follow the Hearts, and you won’t go far wrong. See you next season.