McKinlay can’t blame Hearts fans for despair

PERTURBED by the rumblings of Hearts fans uneasy with chief executive Andrew McKinlay’s lack of visibility in these troubled times, a midweek internet search for his insight threw up an interesting thing from a while back.

‘When it came to 3pm on a Saturday, I didn’t feel I wanted to watch a game,’ he said on leaving his job at the SFA for a role with Scottish Golf in July 2018.

‘I never fell out of love with the Scotland team. That is a different emotional attachment, but I struggled a bit with club football.’

Insisting in that interview that his passion for golf would never die, who knows if he has ever rediscovered his old appetite for the Mitre Delta instead of the Titleist Pro V1?

Who knows, indeed, what he is doing now to arrest the Tynecastle club’s decline?

Certainly, he might want to quiz manager Robbie Neilson on the wisdom, after being knocked out of the cups by Alloa and a rusty Brora Rangers, of stating that punters displeased with limping over the line in the Championship ‘should be happy… should be enjoying the football’.

Enjoyment has been a foreign country to Jambos punters for months. It is clearly a feeling McKinlay has known in the past and there must be others ‘struggling a bit with club football’ right now.

Season tickets for next term, whenever it is decided to make them available, are hardly likely to sell themselves with the current regime in charge. That should be on the minds of the current CEO and everyone at the top of that club.