Down White Hearts Lane: Spurs ensured glamorous centenary game

Published Date: 18 August 2011
By Alan Pattullo
When officials at Heart of Midlothian turned their minds to a game to celebrate the club's centenary in 1974 it was only ever a question of finding a date which suited Tottenham Hotspur.
No other club seemed a more appropriate or logical choice to fill the role of opponents as Hearts marked the first 100 years in their proud history. Common sense dictated that the opposition should be of a high calibre if a sense of occasion was to be brought to the event. Spurs fitted the bill on that count, having featured twice in the final of the Uefa Cup since 1970, winning it once. There still also existed signs of the glitterdust which fell on their shoulders when becoming the first English side in the 20th century to win the double of league championship and FA Cup, in 1960-61.

Even by then Hearts had established a connection with the club, playing them twice in 1956 in what was a short-lived midweek floodlight league, quickly abandoned when European football started to capture the imagination. Hearts also hosted Spurs in 1953, and again in 1969 and 1971. And a Scottish internationalist had joined Spurs from Hearts before Dave Mackay. Tom Collins, described as a "sturdy full back" and who made one appearance for his country, signed for the London club for £825 in November 1910, a huge fee at the time. He was maimed in the First World War and both Hearts and Spurs later came together for a more solemn reason - to raise funds for Collins' medical treatment.

The sides met for a more joyous reason 37 years ago. If Spurs' star was about to dip, it was not apparent on August 3 1974, when the visitors could still field internationalists of the standard of Pat Jennings, Mike England, Martin Chivers and Martin Peters in a match which was the highlight of Hearts' centenary season. Over 13,000 fans watched Donald Ford put the home side in front with a penalty that was then cancelled out by a late equaliser from Spurs substitute John Pratt. "We could not have have chosen more popular opponents," the match programme stated, in a welcome to that afternoon's opponents.

The match finished 1-1 and the meeting further strengthened the ties between the clubs, who had met on five previous occasions since the war and who also had a dearly loved additional association. The aforementioned Mackay's transfer from Hearts to Spurs in 1959 for a then eye-opening sum of £32,000 meant followers of the Tynecastle club were instantly made fans of the London club too. The size of fee also meant Hearts officials looked especially kindly on Spurs. As the Hearts historian David Speed explained to The Scotsman yesterday, £32,000 was a lot of money to clubs at the time. "There was clearly already a good relationship between the clubs, one cemented by the transfer of Dave Mackay," said Speed. "That was quite a sum of money at the time. If you consider that players were earning around £1200 a year, then the money would have effectively covered the entire wage bill for the first-team for a year. And that's significant."

But the club were, of course, also linked for more agreeable reasons than simply financial. They endeavoured to play the football their romantic names suggested that they should. Spurs, of course, were the ultimate glamour club, able to attract the likes of Alan Gilzean from Scotland and also lure Jimmy Greaves back from Italy. Hearts, meanwhile, relished the reputation on which they could continue trading long after such talents as the Terrible Trio forward line of Alfie Conn, Willie Bauld and Jimmy Wardhaugh had stopped playing for the club, and after Mackay, too, had departed.

Matches continued between the sides after 1974. In August 1990, just weeks after the England party had returned home from Italia '90. Paul Gascoigne and Chris Waddle featured in the side held 1-1 at Tynecastle.

Two further meetings, in 1992 and 1999, take us up to the present, with Hearts set to host the first competitive clash between long-term friends. Tonight's Europa League play-off tie is serendipitous, since relations had threatened to sour last year when a silver-plated punchbowl, gifted by Hearts to Spurs on the day of the Edinburgh club's centenary, was put up for auction in Leicester. Most recently it had been used as a flowerpot and just how it had been allowed to leave the London club's possession remains a mystery.

Neither Hearts nor Spurs lodged a bid in an effort to be re-united with the ornate item when it came up for auction in December, although it did return to a spiritual home of sorts. The winning bid, the princely sum of £600, was discovered to have come from Edinburgh.

Taken from the Scotsman