Great Waldo fails to do the trick for Hearts

Ian Paul

1 Jun 1993

The frustration of being unable to take Hearts football club into the highest echelon of the Scottish game has finally taken its toll on the flamboyant Wallace Mercer

HOWEVER they fare in their post-Mercer age, if it does indeed come about, Hearts will never go through a more eventful 12 years than they have enjoyed during the flamboyant reign of The Great Waldo, the press conference champ.

The tycoon who hit Tynecastle with the ferocity of a typhoon when he rustled up the £350,000 to take over the Edinburgh club in May, 1981, steered them from the depression of relegation to a place in Europe, and along the way used that extrovert personality to gain far more headlines for the Jam Tarts than was their due.

Shrewd and single-minded, Mercer may have pound signs where the rest of us have pupils, but he was unquestionably the man of the hour for a club which was sinking towards oblivion.

He did become football's dial-a-quote, but behind that brash, eloquent front lurked a brain that saw the high-profile route to a prominent place for Hearts in the Scottish game.

He loved the spotlight, but no-one could argue that his love for the club was less passionate.

He held press conferences to announce press conferences, he applied well-honed business skills to a business he knew could not become profitable.

His energy transformed Hearts FC into a roller-coaster which produced a surprise round every bend and some hefty thumps at the bottom of the slopes.

Wallace turned out to be a classic paradox, caring but ruthless, decisive but tormented with self-doubt.

He was the committed Tory who let the unemployed in for cut prices.

He and the manager he appointed, Alex MacDonald, led the club so close to the premier division championship that the devastation felt at losing out on the last day of season 1985-86 has never been truly erased from their psyche.

It is inconceivable to imagine that MacDonald would have been sacked four years later, or that Mercer would be putting Hearts up for sale today, if they had beaten Dundee on that painful afternoon at Dens Park when they fell at the last hurdle to let Celtic take the title on goal difference.

The anguish suffered then, when the Tynecastle club had believed it was about to end a quarter of a century's wait for the most coveted prize in the Scottish game, has left a legacy which can perhaps only be exorcised by successors to the Mercer era.

He had felt that Joe Jordan would take the club a stage beyond MacDonald's plane, which had been reached by dint of Alex's extraordinary ability to get the best, and sometimes it seemed even more, out of ordinary players.

That sacking of MacDonald, following upon the dismissal of Sandy Jardine for economic reasons, has not been justified.

The ambitious hopes needed financial backing if Jordan was to do something different.

A combination of the recession, the Taylor Report, and a lack of real success meant that the club was in no financial state to enter the next stage in the grand plan.

Jordan would have to continue shopping in Ratner's rather than Tiffany's.

But there had been no money to shop at all when Mercer was first approached in 1981 about gathering a bid for the club.

The chairman then, Archie Martin, knew that capital was desperately needed to tackle the club's massive debts.

Hearts had been relegated to the first division after gathering a paltry 18 points, and a depressing all-time low total of 120,000 fans had turned out to watch them throughout the season.

His first move had been to persuade Kenny Waugh, the Edinburgh bookie who was to take over Hibs, to bid £255,000, but when Mercer, who was a minor shareholder at Tynecastle, got his consortium into full stride the deal eventually was sealed at £350,000, more than £250,000 of which had come from his own business resources.

For a man who had really only fallen for the beautiful game in a big way at Wembley a few weeks earlier when Scotland beat England, it was a conversion of Pauline proportions.

Within days the chairman, Martin, who had supported Waugh, resigned and then manager Bobby Moncur left.

Events were moving along at the rapid pace which characterised the Mercer style.

He put assistant manager Tony Ford in temporary charge but then gave the first real insight into his big-time ambitions by trying to persuade Jock Wallace then Jim McLean to become manager.

Neither succumbed to the silver-tongued eloquence and Ford was allowed to take control.

He, too, soon left, as did the new chairman, and MacDonald was appointed player-coach.

The revolution had begun.

Ten years later MacDonald was to go and after his successor, Jordan, was dismissed last month, the rumours of Mercer's intention to get out of the hot seat became rife.

Yet he had been very active in the attempted breakaway by the major clubs in the proposed Super League, of which he was chairman, and it will remain impossible for many of us to believe that he will be able to slake that thirst for excitement which led him into the bizarre world of football club ownership.

He made one error of judgment above all others when he mis-read completely the capital reaction to his intention to "save" Hibernian from extinction by attempting to take them over.

It was a classic example of egotism overtaking perception, and the resultant outcry, when he was vilified, his house put on police guard, his family threatened, and his lifestyle overturned, proved a ferocious lesson for a man who had not foreseen the outrage such a suggestion would inevitably excite.

He survived, but perhaps it was that traumatic experience as much as the frustration of being unable to take his club into the highest echelon which sowed the seeds of the decision to quit Edinburgh and, indeed, Scotland.

Taken from the Herald