This year has been difficult but the celebrations after beating Celtic made all the bother worthwhile
AS the lights went out on Sunday afternoon at Tynecastle, prompting Celtic directors to joke about employing any and all means to protect their team’s long unbeaten record, Ann Budge allowed herself no more than a nervous laugh.
After everything she had been through, the daily crises and nightly worries, surely her best-ever experience at the home of Hearts wasn’t going to be blown by something as ludicrous as a half-time power cut. Was it? As a kind of sick send-off for 2017, it would have been in keeping with much that had gone before during 12 maddening months down Gorgie way.
The sheer relief the Hearts owner felt when those floodlights came back on early in the second half, removing the risk of abandonment and illuminating a home victory destined to be remembered for ever, was almost overwhelming.
No, the experienced businesswoman, grandmother and all-round sensible soul did not start leaping up and down with her back to goal; ‘doing the Poznan’ would not have been decent form in the directors’ box.
But she had earned the right to at least clap and laugh along with the diehards. She deserved this. Speaking after an annual general meeting conducted in a much lighter mood than some had been predicting, a testament to what a 4-0 win over Celtic can do, Budge recalled the worrying moment when a blown fuse had her seriously concerned.
‘We were just getting ready to go back out, I was standing talking to the Celtic directors — and everything went out,’ she explained.
‘I said: “I do not believe this, this cannot be happening”. There was lots of humour from them, saying: “We can’t let our record go!” It was all good humour.
‘But until I got a phone call and then a text saying it was just a fuse, it could be fixed, that was when I relaxed.
‘Even then, I was sitting there at the start of the second half, looking up and waiting for the lights to come back on.
‘That (abandonment) would not have been a good moment to experience.’
Asked if the thrill of ending Celtic’s invincible status in such emphatic style had made all the on and off-field toils of the preceding 12 months worth it, Budge said: ‘Well, as the game progressed. Up until a certain point, I was like every other Hearts supporter, thinking: “We’re not there yet!”
‘The twirly and everything else the fans did, that was fantastic. I didn’t do the Poznan — but I did smile when it was happening!
‘It’s probably the best I have seen in all my years, certainly since I took over. The atmosphere was fantastic.’ Few would begrudge Budge a good day out, given everything she has put into Hearts.
After all she has been through during a tumultuous, troubled and delayed replacement of a main stand that had stood for over a century, it was only fitting that the new temple of Tynecastle should produce one almighty afternoon for the woman at the helm.
Budge is quick to agree that, in all her years of business, 2017 might just go down as the toughest yet. ‘I think so,’ said the woman who built an IT empire from scratch. ‘To be honest, when you look back at what you’ve done in the past, you do tend to forget the bad times. I’m sure I must have had trauma and stress before. ‘But this last year, maybe even just the last six months, has been a worry. ‘Is everything going to come together? Are we going to get back to Tynecastle? Are we going to really be able to pull all these plans off? ‘I’ve thought about whether I would do anything different quite a lot, actually.
‘Someone recently asked me if we had been too ambitious; too aggressive in our timeframe. And yes, I did put a lot of pressure on it. But we really needed to continue to play football here.
‘We simply didn’t have the resources to say: “Let’s play football away from Tynecastle for a year”. That would have floored us in a number of different ways.
‘So, would I have done things differently? Probably a few small things. But overall I think I would have stuck with the plan.
‘Every so often, I do have to say: “Remember, it’s a football club, not a construction business”. So I am looking forward to getting back to that in 2018.’
Financially, the new stand has been expensive. Confirmation came yesterday that the original £12million bill had been increased by a good £3m.
Budge (left) is confident the gap can be filled, explaining that the club’s anonymous ‘benefactors’ had increased their overall contribution by an extra £1.5m to £4.5m in total.
‘The funding is secured,’ she said. ‘I had a number of different funding sources identified at the beginning of the project.
‘Our benefactors have been fantastic and increased their donations. Because the club has had a good year, our contributions make up some of that.
‘We have a funding gap at the moment of about a million. Can the club contribute half a million? Yes, we can. Can we raise half a million with some initiatives going on? I genuinely believe we can.’
When it was pointed out that Budge hadn’t given the ‘benefactors’ their full title, missing out the essential ‘mystery’ element from no-name donors, she laughed and said: ‘They’re just a group of private people who happen to love the club and love what’s going on here. They’ve been incredible.’
On the field, the departure of Ian Cathro — something Budge has covered at length previously — and the move downstairs by director of football Craig Levein has obviously transformed fortunes.
If the relationship between owner and manager is the bedrock upon which any successful club is built, Hearts are in a good place.
Explaining the confidence she had in a manager brave enough to include two 16-year-olds in his squad to face Celtic, handing Harry Cochrane a start and throwing Anthony McDonald on as a sub, Budge said: ‘The fact that he is so totally committed to youth makes a difference.
‘If someone else had come along and said to me, as Craig did on Friday, “Well, we’re going to play Harry. And Ant is going to be there…” I would probably have been asking: “Erm, are you sure?” But because it’s Craig, and because he knows these guys, it’s reassuring.
‘He’s watched these boys develop — and he’s been talking about them forever. So, if he thinks they can cope, that’s good enough.
‘And he’s not careless, either. He wouldn’t put them in unless he was sure.
‘He went through a bit of wondering if it was going to be fair on the guys, putting them into that kind of game.
‘I know that he thinks about all of these things. If he thought they couldn’t deal with it, for whatever reason, he wouldn’t have done it.
‘In the first year I took over, he was telling us that the academy had gaps all over the place, this age group is really not very good, blah, blah, blah.
‘Then from the second year it was: “You just wait, we’ve got a fantastic bunch of lads, they’ll be coming through… this season.”
‘At the time, it’s words. So to be able to actually see it is great.
‘I’ve been up to the performance academy and I’ve met a number of the young guys who are now there. I seriously hope it’s going to be a continuous supply of at least half a dozen every year.’