Smoke and mirrors from honest Hearts
IF you build it, they will come. The only trouble is that they will probably want somewhere to sit. And someone to tell them the truth when they discover it is only half-finished. Hearts, now forever to be known as the team who built a stand and forgot to order the seats, did, of course, cough up the reason why their Field of Dreams is a little further away from becoming reality than planned. After 24 hours. And two press releases.
We got there in the end, though. That’s the main thing. After all, they advertise very clearly on their official website a policy of ‘at all times communicating openly and honestly with our supporters’, so why wouldn’t we give them the benefit of the doubt?
Yes, okay. Their initial statement explaining why they’ll be spending three months playing a load of games away from home before moving into a rugby stadium quite categorically, lay a large part of the blame at the door of ‘the wettest June/July in years’. One of these ‘things we cannot control’.
Perhaps that was true, though. It’s always possible the fella in charge of the great Tynecastle ‘To-Do List’ dropped the betting slip it was scribbled on in a puddle. Maybe a little pixie stole it from his pocket to use as an umbrella. How can Ann Budge be expected to have any control over that?
This is not some two-bit operation like Dundee United we are dealing with here, after all. Some outfit whose manager warns there is no way their goalie Cammy Bell will be sold on the cheap just hours before the club puts him up for sale on Twitter (naturally) — and lets him leave for Kilmarnock for free.
No, sirree. This is a club of standards. Of joined-up thinking. Of countless foreign players being brought in to tear up a team lying in a European place, squander that European place and then be booted back out the door.
This is a club where the fans drive the process, pouring monthly subscriptions in over and above their season-ticket costs in the most remarkable expression of faith.
Good grief, if the management was to be caught telling them porkies about something as inconsequential — albeit as embarrassing — as that botch-up over the seats, people may wonder if it really was worth looking under the surface with regard to other, more significant matters.
I mean, what about that stuff Neil Alexander was saying on the radio on Friday night about Craig Levein ‘getting away with murder’?
He certainly left little doubt that, during his two years as goalkeeper, the director of football was often in the dressing room on matchdays.
And never out of the manager Robbie Neilson’s ear.
Surely not. Ian Cathro addressed that after Aberdeen in February.
Remember, when he told us Levein was only in with the players that day because of the ‘schematics of Pittodrie’ and we all scoffed at BT Sport for having the temerity to broadcast pictures of Jon Daly running from stand to dugout with messages to pass on to the coaching staff. Cathro made it clear Levein was ‘never’ in the dressing room normally.
‘Non-story’, he said. Ian knew everything about what made a story. And about journalism. And football. And how getting walloped off the likes of Peterhead in the cup was nothing to get het up about.
Noise, he called it. Needless diversions from his important work. Like, on July 21, when he made it clear Jamie Walker was in splendid fettle despite those blasted offers from Rangers. ‘Things are fine and it’s other people’s noise that makes you think otherwise,’ he said.
Wise words. Shame Jamie is now teetering on the edge of madness, by all accounts. That’s agents for you. So good of the club to shut him down and sideline him for his own welfare. Just like his dad in the summer when he was posting stuff on social media about the Hearts management trying to force his son out the door.
‘Misinformation,’ the club called it in another of those press releases. Mr Walker deleted his comments. At least there has been no bad blood. No messiness.
Yet, despite all that, we now have Brendan Rodgers sticking his neb in. All this noise, noise, noise. These ghastly journalists, reporting what people say — particularly the Celtic manager saying that he thinks someone other than Cathro was buying all the players. Didn’t he pay attention when Levein spoke after the January window and the arrival of nine players, six of whom have since being hunted?
‘While I signed the players, Ian chose them,’ he stated. ‘He is very clear about every position.’
Can’t we just accept the facts and let Craig and Ann get on with it now? This new, sustainable Hearts is built on punters being fully informed, keeping their direct debits rolling in, seeing the rebuild through until they take over the club themselves. The project collapses without them.
Surely no one would be silly enough to tell them fibs about what is going on behind the scenes. Would they?