Hearts have today announced that their return to Tynecastle following the completion of the club’s new main stand has been delayed a second time. The Gorgie club were due to move back to their permanent home in time for their Ladbrokes Premiership clash with Kilmarnock on Sunday 5th November. However, doubt was cast on this last week when Head Coach Craig Levein admitted to the possibility of a ‘Plan B’ hinting the new stand would not be ready in time.
Today the club confirmed the game against Killie will be played at BT Murrayfield.
Hearts owner Ann Budge released the following statement on the official Hearts website:
“Following a period of fairly intense speculation over the past few weeks, I can now confirm that the Board has decided to take further advantage of our contingency arrangements with the SRU to play our “Home” fixture against Kilmarnock FC, on Sunday, 5th November, at BT Murrayfield.
These arrangements have been confirmed with all parties involved and I would like to record my appreciation for their co-operation in agreeing to the change in venue.
I will issue a further detailed progress up-date to our supporters later in the week. I would, however, take this opportunity to stress that the building programme will see the handover of Phase 1 requirements to the club within the next 10 days.
However, the time then remaining to enable “acceptance testing” of all the various new facilities and processes would be very limited, were we to aim to play our opening game on 5th November 2017.
One of our key objectives is to ensure that our first game back at Tynecastle runs smoothly, and provides supporters with the best possible match-day experience. We have therefore decided to take advantage of the opportunity open to us to call on our contingency arrangements for this fixture, thereby giving us more time to robustly test out all of our new facilities.
I will finish at this point by thanking you all for your fantastic support so far this season, which has helped the team immeasurably. To be in a top six position, having played all 10 league games away from Tynecastle, is a terrific achievement, helped in no small measure by the superb travelling support and indeed by the wonderful turnout at BT Murrayfield. Please keep it up. We will be home soon!”
This is the second time Hearts have postponed their return to Tynecastle. The original date for their return was 9th September for the visit of Aberdeen but this game was played at Murrayfield due to a problem with the seats for the new stand.
Source: www.heartsfc.co.uk
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