The Rivals Game...

[Sherlock]

I spotted this on HibeesBounce...

 

... is the name of a new book which has just been published about foootball rivalry between clubs who share the same Cities and towns, or to be more specific, the Derby Match. The author is some London-based BBC sports writer(who's name escapes me) and he takes a look at derbies all over Britain & Europe, and has included a section on the Edinburgh Derby. His research for each Derby meant talking to fans of the clubs involved, and he has built up a fairly constructive picture of what the derby, and the clubs involved, means to both sets of fans. The author contacted a number of Hibs fans to get their thoughts on Hibs and the Derby, and one of them put him in touch with the Official Heart Of Midlothian FC Historian, Mr David Speed.

 

I was handed this excerpt today, and, well I'll let you make you're own mind up about how the Jambos view us, Officially ...

 

We're coming in at the tail end of the "Hibs version", then Mr David Speed takes over ...

 

 

... The harp did eventually return, being incorporated into a new crest in 2000 alongside a depiction of Edinburgh castle and a ship, representing Leith. For the first time the name of the city was also used with the words ~ Hibernian Edinburgh ~ encircling the crest. There may also have been a hint of compromise in this; the harp is actually dominated by local and more identifiably Scottish symbols. Harry Swan would not have objected.

 

Hearts fans, on the other hand, complained that the new badge was nothing more than a gimmick, designed to exploit the fact that their title referred not to the city itself but to Midlothian. If they were being thin-skinned perhaps it was understandable

 

Since the Baltic banker, Vladimir Romanov, took charge in 2005, there have been constant taunts that Hearts are now nothing more than an outpost of Lithuanian football. Their squad has been flooded with imports from that country to the extent that Scottish players have sometimes seemed to be in a minority. Unsettling times for many at a club which is highly traditional and has a strongly developed sense of its history and place in the game.

 

David Speed is the official Hearts historian. His own links to the team go back to the club's earliest days. David, who was carried into the ground as a child, told me this was not unusual. "There is a big family tradition at Tynecastle. Hearts supporters regard it as 'Edinburgh's club', 'Edina's darlings'. I notice that Hibs have put Edinburgh on their badge because they struggle for identity, as far as I am concerned, as an Edinburgh club. We consider ourselves to be the city's club. When they put Edinburgh on their badge, I thought, 'well, that's a wee bit petty.' I'll come right to the point here, we consider ourselves the superior club and it's supported by the fact that we have won more honours. The Hearts have won 41 per cent of the derby games to Hibs' 26 per cent. We have beaten them more times at both Tynecastle and Easter Road." In fact Hearts even went on an unbeaten run of 22 derby matches beginning in the late 1980s. "So we do consider ourselves to be a wee bit special," continued Speed. "We do see the Hearts as a cut above the rest. I can imagine every Hibs fan cringing at me saying that, but that's how we fee!. We are Edinburgh's club and the number one club in the city."

 

David also says the fans have certain standards which have always been important. "My father works in the fish market in Edinburgh and he's been in that trade all his life. He's eighty and he still works to this day. When he gets home from work he has a shower and puts his best clothes on and goes up to Tynecastle. He's a working-class guy, but would never dream of not tidying himself up to go to see the Hearts playing. There are some parts of Britain where people used to go to the games in their working clothes, not in my experience at Tynecastle.

 

My dad started going in the late 1920s and, even after the war when the guys worked until twelve o'clock, it was a bit of a pain getting away home, getting changed"and up to Tynecastle, but they did it. They wouldn't have been seen dead there in their dirty gear. It's very unusual. Again we do see ourselves as a football club being a wee bit more classy." David is right in as much as Hearts have long been viewed as the establishment club in what is the city of the establishment. To the great Scottish poet, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edinburgh was a 'mad god's dream' and to others 'the Athens of the north'. Really, though, at its heart is finance and institutions such as the legal system and the established church. Edinburgh thrives on power, and has long been undeniably wealthy.

 

While Hearts fans willingly accept their role as part of the established elite, their rivals see this as a negative. Lloyd Quinnan told me how for him. "The real difference is that Hearts are the team of the rich.," he said. "That's what I have grown up with, crystallized for us by the fact that the posh boys from George Watson's [a leading private school] wore maroon and white scarves, so they didn't have to buy another one when they went to Tynecastle on a Saturday.

 

Also the board of Hearts has always been those who were very tight to organisations like the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council, which up until the mid-1980s was always Tory. If you look back over the board of Hearts compared to the board of Hibs, Hearts was very much, until the 1980s, successful businessmen, lawyers, but also people who were brought in from major businesses like the banks. For Hibs it has always been small businessmen, bookmakers, guys with building firms, and before that, bakers, more artisan successful tradesmen.

 

Thoughts?

[Le Chat]

 

 

 

Thoughts?

 

Fecking reptiles.

[davemclaren]

Fecking reptiles.

 

Succinct.

[grumpyjambo]

Fecking reptiles.

 

Please say what you mean!

[Alan_R]

what alot of pesh. makes us sounds like pompous *******s. I would expect nothing less than a London BBC writer to buy into all that crap. Least it is true about us winning more honours, We are the bigger team but it could have been worded a hell of alot better.