Mercer lifts 'smokescreen' to see what future holds

DEREK DOUGLAS

19 Sep 1990

THE Jaguar and the Volkswagen cars standing in the driveway of Wallace Mercer's home in the plush Barnton suburb of Edinburgh flash a warning for the unwary.

The registration plate XX1 adorns the Jag, and its counterpart on the VW reads XX2 -- double-cross one and two.

The chairman of Heart of Midlothian FC is, by his own admission, a man who lives by his wits.

When he tells you that he delights in the erection of smokescreens and not letting the left hand know what the right is trying to achieve, then conversational admissions and revelations have to be weighed in that light.

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of a bitter summer during which he tried and failed to take over city rivals Hibernian, and more recently sacked a manager of nine years standing, his candid admission that football club chairmanship is a young man's game and that he can foresee a time soon when he will step aside, has the ring of authenticity and sounds like the product of considered reflection.

There is no doubt that Mercer was shaken by the vehemence of the reaction which greeted his decision to bid for Hibernian.

He and his wife and two children were the subject of repeated death threats, the most recent of which arrived by mail at his home just before Saturday's tinderbox local derby at Easter Road.

Mercer didn't attend, but the feared confrontation occurred anyway; 36 fans were arrested and 17 injured after a pitch invasion and fighting on the terracing.

Of that long, hot and fractious summer, Mercer says: "As chairman of the board I accept ultimate executive responsibility for what we decided to do and I have no regrets about the concept, but I have many regrets about what happened thereafter.

It was probably a misjudgment."

On the question of resigning the chairmanship, he says: "I'm not going to get out right away.

I think that the last time you should be thinking of getting out in any business situation is when the ship needs some direction.

"It would be totally irresponsible for me to think of my personal feelings at the present time with the problems of the summer, and the backwash of that still evident at Easter Road on Saturday.

We also have the short-term domestic problem where, sadly, we have had to lose a manager after nine years."

"However, I think a period of reflection will be taken later on in the year or early spring when hopefully things will have settled down."

Pressed, Mercer clarifies his position: "I have got to think long and hard over the effect this whole thing has had on my family; that is my wife, son and daughter.

A lot of it is no doubt untold to me, subconscious.

They have been under constant pressure over the past six weeks with constant threats, phone calls and so on.

The police have told me not to mention it because all it does is increase the tension.

We are not just talking of the odd threat; we are talking about threats virtually on a daily basis by letter, by phone and everything else.

It really is, terrifying -- no not terrifying, but it chips away at you."

He makes it all sound quite horrendous.

Why does he expose himself and his family to such pressures? At which point does he say he doesn't need these pressures any more?

"In terms of the national debate and national concerns, football should be light entertainment.

But a lot of the pressures which my family and I have been facing goes with the territory.

You have got to be thick-skinned and unemotional, and if I wasn't doing a good job then I wouldn't be getting the aggravation I'm getting.

"I have a responsibility to my employees and my shareholders but .

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the priority in my life is obviously the well-being of my family, and Hearts come second to that."

Property developer Wallace Mercer took over at Tynecastle in 1981 after a battle for control against Edinburgh bookmaker Kenny Waugh who later, ironically, went on to take over Hibernian.

It has always been Mercer's intention to acquire for Hearts a part in the big picture.

He and his wife Ann control through their Pentland Securities company, some 76% of Hearts' shares.

Even when he quits as chairman he will still have an interest having had written into the club constitution the caveat that he will retain a 12% shareholding.

He is a rich man and has a major personal stake in his other business operation, Dunedin Properties.

No doubt had he not decided to become chairman at Tynecastle then his energy and vision could have been channelled into making him an even more successful businessman and even more money.

This, though, ignores the ego factor.

Does Wallace Mercer have an ego? Is the Pope a Catholic? He makes no secret of the fact that he enjoys the limelight and media attention.

He denies, though, that he is an egomaniac.

It hurts him when he is accused of such a failing and he argues, with justification, that banks and finance houses don't bankroll egomaniacs.

But in a biography published just two years ago he did liken the role of football chairman to that of the controlled egomaniac.

Had the ego got out of control during the summer when he launched the bid for Hibs?

"The situation was this.

I was approached by three Hibs shareholders one night in Cosmo's restaurant in Edinburgh.

These were people with lots of money and they told me that they had been offered David Rowland's share stake.

They told me that I'd done a cracking job at Hearts and although they were not particularly keen to take me on they asked me if I had ever thought of putting my club with their club and seeing what could be created.

These were Hibs shareholders and wealthy men in their own right.

"I came home and said to Ann 'You'll never believe the daft idea that was put to me'.

The next day I took my vice-chairman Pilmar Smith out for lunch and told him what they had said.

He said it was a brilliant idea.

I said you must be joking.

I didn't think he was the full shilling.

so I got my wife to ring him next morning.

but Pilmar still thought it was a good idea.

So that's what got us thinking about it.

Then we sat down and looked at it, and it made a lot of sense.

"The irony is that tribalism, the thing which we were trying to stamp out, to take the whole thing forward, was the thing that exploded."

This lack of understanding on Mercer's part of the tribal and malignantly partisan element of football support gives validity to the argument that the Hearts chairman, a rugby player in his youth, does not really have football in his blood.

Why hadn't they allowed for this tribalism factor in the takeover bid?

"We won the business argument but lost the social argument comprehensively.

There is no question about that.

We got that totally wrong and we would have pulled out sooner if we could have done, but because we had an offer on the table we felt we had a moral and a business obligation to go through with the thing."

"Privately, and I've never said this before, Ann and I had changed our minds three or four weeks before the end -- because of the social thing."

The "religion" aspect is another which was underestimated and is, even yet, one which Mercer will not talk about.

Privately, though, he does concede that the existence of "Protestant/Unionist" Hearts and "Roman Catholic/Republican" Hibernian was another factor that he had failed to contend with.

He says that in 15 or 20 years business and social life in Edinburgh, sectarianism was something which he had simply not encountered.

This may be the case in Barnton, but not necessarily so in Gorgie or down Leith Walk.

Returning to the subject of the day when he will no longer wish to occupy the chairman's post at Tynecastle, Mercer declares: "Of course there will come a time when it is in my, and the club's, best interests to do other things.

But even when that point is reached I will still keep a reasonable shareholding in Hearts.

It is something I care very deeply for, but there are other challenges and other things that I want to do with my life.

There will come a point, sooner rather than later, when that has got to be taken on board.

"I am now 44 and have been on the hot seat for nine years.

That is quite a long time.

Certain constraints are now more obvious to me than they were before.

Obviously in my early 40s I don't have the energy levels or the driving ambition I had in my 30s.

Also, effectively, I have worked and earned money, first with part-time jobs since I was 12 years of age, since the death of my father.

I'm committed to the work ethic seven days a week.

Now, this has been a philosophy and that has been 32 years in the making.

I'm now in my early 40s and I don't need to work to maintain my family's lifestyle."

So Wallace Mercer is a rich man.

Does he know exactly how much he is worth? After a suitable pause for thought he declares: "I don't know.

Put it the other way round.

My shareholding in Hearts carries a debt ticket of £750,000 and I would imagine, not that it is immediately available, that if I put 76% of the shares up for sale then someone would put a lot of money up for them.

I've had approaches even when they are not for sale, from private individuals and from businesses."

Mercer concedes, too, that there will come a time when he has nothing fresh to offer at Tynecastle and that a new approach will become essential.

He put this down, once again, to the ageing process.

"Yes, you can only do a job for so long and then you need a fresh approach.

This job, although it is a great honour, is also a burden, a drain, an onerous task.

You have to know when you still have the strength to handle it."

He is obviously a man who places great store by youth.

He gives his views as to the optimum age-profile of the Alex MacDonald replacement: "We won't be looking for anyone, no matter how well equipped, who is over 45.

The age range for us, in my judgment, is mid-thirties to early forties.

I do think that you need the energy and the adrenalin to handle it.

That is what it takes at times."

Nine years ago when Wallace Mercer took over at Tynecastle the club was at rock bottom.

He and his board have dragged it up by its bootstraps since then, but in recent years this success has levelled out.

Maybe he can do nothing further for the club?

"I accept that this can happen, but I don't think that position will be reached for another year or so.

Believe it or not, I found the summer very stimulating.

I didn't find the experience of actually making the offer for Hibs stimulating and on reflection that was an error of judgment, done for the right reasons but but which achieved the wrong impact.

I think, though, that we withdrew with a degree of honour and dignity.

"I think we have to let things run for another year or so.

There are a lot of exciting things on the table at the present time.

We have some good young players coming into the team.

We have the prospect of a new manager.

We have given a public commitment to providing a new stadium for Edinburgh and Hearts but there is no doubt that there will come a point, and it will be obvious to me without being told, when it is time to go."

He says his goals are to maintain the progress of a business which is very close to his heart.

"For people to say it is egomania is a gross insult; obviously there is an element of that and obviously it is not a job for a shrinking violet, but the irony is that chief executives of major companies are now much more personality driven than they were in the past.

Sure there has to be a balance, but you have to have self-confidence and you have got to go for it at times."

"If you look back at the decision I took with my colleagues a week past Sunday, which was the demise of Alex MacDonald, then you were looking at a high-risk scenario.

The easy option, as I told the players, would have been to let things run their course and when a change became necessary it would have been by the will of the people, i.e.

the fans; but that would have been an abrogation of responsibility on my part."

Mercer dismisses the suggestion that the clever thing would have been to have found a replacement management team before sacking MacDonald and Walter Borthwick.

"That would have been totally immoral for two reasons.

First if you have worked with someone for nine years they just have to look you in the eyes to sense that you are not with them any longer.

You don't need to say anything.

It's a native thing.

They just know.

Alex and I had a relationship and because I had too much respect for him it would have been totally disloyal on my part to be plotting his dismissal, thinking about alternatives and at the same time patting him on the back and wishing him well.

"The second thing is that until you have a few days after someone has gone I don't think that you can reflect and handle things clearly.

We deliberately decided to give ourselves seven days, and the seventh day was yesterday and we sat down, took out a sheet of paper and out of 30 or 40 names we now have six on the list.

I am now in a less emotional state to make a balanced and correct judgment and it also allows people who are interested to come forward naturally without having to make hole-in-the-corner approaches."

Mercer declines to be drawn on the list of prospective managerial candidates currently filling the back pages of newspapers.

He takes particular delight in the smokescreen he claims to have put around the present favourite, Joe Jordan of Bristol City.

Mercer declares that when the name was put to him by reporters he neither confirmed nor denied that Jordan was on the list, but he just knew that journalists would take this as a nod and a wink in the direction of the ex- Scottish international.

"I'm a property developer.

I've lived on my wits for years.

I was brought up from the age of 12 playing three card brag at school.

It's like find the lady.

You let them think they know where the right hand is going and all the while the left hand is doing something else.

What we have laid is a smokescreen and the tabloids think they have it bang to rights.

You need time and space to negotiate and you have to put up a credible alternative.

When I was asked if Jordan was the kind of man for us I said he had all the characteristics we are looking for in a manger, but that I couldn't confirm or deny that he was on the list.

"But I was willing to bet bottom dollar that the papers would say 'Mercer didn't deny it but I could see it there in his eyes'.

That's body language.

The right smirk at the wrong time and vice-versa.

All that I am saying is that if you are going for someone then the psychology is that you want them to think that they're not the only option.

So it's more subtle even than winding up the press.

The thing is, whether you're selling a product or whatever, to create the illusion that they want it but they can't have it.

You increase the juice factor, and especially so if they think that someone else wants it."

So, unlike his political soulmate Mrs Thatcher, Mercer does not see himself going on and on and on.

He comes back once again to this clear picture of demitting office in the relatively near future.

"I would like to go on for another two or three years.

I would like to see before I stand down a stadium site identified and I still favour David Murray's site at Hermiston and we are also talking about Ingliston and a couple of other places.

I want to see the financing of that in place, maybe not the completion, but the financing in place.

"I want to see the progression of Dunedin which is now a company with assets of £80m and I would like to see the progression of my young men to take over my job as soon as possible, and that could happen within a couple of years.

That again is the kind of business where a fresh approach is needed.

"Both these things are coming to an end in my life in the next two to three years, and I have to accept and handle the reality of that.

Handling the reality of that gives me the strength to take the thing forward.

Obviously you need the benefit of counsel and there may have been a misjudgment in the summer, but that is just a fact of life.

What is done is done and it was done in the glare of publicity, but I don't think I can be accused of not at least being radical, showing a bit of vision, looking at the options and opening up the debate.

If that is a crime then I am guilty, but if people think that it is all rooted in egomania then they are fundamentally and absolutely wrong."

Taken from the Herald