AN ENTIRE season in a single game. Hearts have led the league all season, but will have to come away from Celtic Park with a result on Saturday to win their first league title since 1960, and achieve immortality.
Celtic trail by a point and need a win, while Hearts could settle for a draw. Away at Parkhead, however, against a club that knows a thing or two about winning titles, this is far easier said than done.
The more paranoid and pessimistic among the Jam Tarts faithful will cast their minds back to 1985-86 — when Hearts led the league until one of the most infamous final day collapses in football history.
Hearts were 200-1 outsiders to win the league on the first day, having finished seventh the previous season, and lost five of their first eight games.
They did not lose again for seven months, from September 1985 to May 1986, and were top of the league going into a final day encounter with Dundee at Dens Park – albeit with Celtic nipping at their heels.
All they had to do was extend their unbeaten streak and avoid defeat at Dens, being two points clear of Celtic on the final day (only two points at this point were awarded for a win).
Celtic, who had won their last seven, were expected to beat St Mirren on the final day, and duly gave them a 5-0 thrashing in Paisley.
It did not look like it would be enough for the Hoops, however, with Hearts holding out until the 83rd minute at 0-0.
Cue Albert Kidd, who had not scored all season, but proceeded to convert from a corner and put a sensational second past a disintegrating Hearts defence, to pile misery and anguish on the shellshocked Jambos in the away end.
The decimated Hearts team then limped into a Scottish Cup final against Aberdeen, and the 3-0 drubbing they took felt almost like a foregone conclusion.
For many Hearts fans, the spectre of ’86, as well as another final day defeat to Kilmarnock in 1965, which similarly lost them the league, still haunts the club.
Bruce, a lifelong Jambo who was enjoying a pint in the Diggers, a storied Gorgie pub, said: “Traditionally, we’ve been quite an unlucky team.
“I was there in ’86, and I was there in ’65, against Kilmarnock. Once again, if we’d have scored one goal that day we would have won the league.
“So that’s twice it’s been twice just been stolen from us, so to speak, at the last minute. So I’m feeling a bit cynical about it.”
Barry, another Jambo who still remembers the pain of ’86 and ’65, described the special atmosphere around the team this time around.
He said: “The atmosphere at Tynecastle has been probably the best I’ve experienced in all the years I have been going: the Rangers game and Wednesday night [against Falkirk] was fantastic.
“So we want that to continue. It looks as though we’re going to qualify for the Champions League and we would have taken that at the start of the season, no doubt about that.
“But now we’ve got so close, I think we deserve to win the league. I think we’ve been the best team.”
The Dundee-Hearts fixture is still talked about whenever the two teams meet, and Albert Kidd has gone down in history as a Dundee-Celtic hero and one of the greatest villains in Hearts history.
Alastair Stupart, who has written three books about Hearts, said: “Hearts should have had a penalty early on but the story goes that the ref, Willie Young, was a Jambo, so, rather than show bias he did not give it.
“Hibs had an Albert Kidd supporters club in future years, and Hearts still refer to St Mirren as St Liedown. There is an alleged story of a still undrunk crate of champagne in a Hearts fans garage.
“This season Hearts have led the league since September except for a few hours one weekend when I think Rangers played before us as were top.”
He added: “Maybe the key moment will be Hearts hitting the Celtic crossbar in December. Injury time with the score at 2-2 Blair Spittal hit the bar.”
Hearts fans will not want the demons of 1986 to return ahead of the biggest day for the club in 40 years, but can be safe in the knowledge that this defeat cannot be said to loom large over the Hearts team’s imagination – given that none of them (aside from Craig Gordon, who has not featured this year) were even born at the time.
Barry Bowie, nursing a pint in the Tynecastle Arms, just round the corner from the stadium, summed the day up curtly.
He said: “It was the worst day of my life. I never went back to school for three weeks!
“Giving a prediction on the game tomorrow, he added: “My heart says yes, my head says no.”
Saturday could, however, present the perfect opportunity to banish the demons of 1986, and stick one to their erstwhile tormenters, Celtic, where they live.
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