Capital men burdened by history of second prizes

Bob Crampsey

22 Nov 1996

Hearts and Rangers have not met very often in cup finals, but when they have, the Tynecastle side have always come away with the runners-up prize.

So, to win the Coca-Cola Cup on Sunday, Jim Jefferies' men will have to create history.

Here, BOB CRAMPSEY recalls the meetings between the clubs in major finals since the first one back in 1903.

IF, as his players clatter their studs nervously in the Parkhead tunnel with five minutes to kick-off on Sunday, Jim Jefferies tells his Hearts side: "Go out there and make history," he will not be speaking in cliches.

He will be asking his side to do what no maroons have ever done before in more than a century.

That's right, no Hearts side have ever beaten Rangers in a Scottish Cup final nor have they done so in the League Cup.

To pin-point Edinburgh's lack of challenge, no Hibernian side have done it either in an official competition, although they had a wartime Southern League Cup success in 1944.

Hearts' record in finals against Rangers is not just mediocre or bad, or appalling.

It is non-existent.

How can this be so? How can a club which has its own litany of the great have made no impact where it matters? Do Bobby Walker, Barney Battles, Andy Anderson, Alex Massie, Tommy Walker, Dave Mackay, the immortal trio of Conn, Bauld, and Wardhaugh, Willie Wallace or Alec Young not possess a Scottish Cup medal among them? Well, not with Hearts against Rangers they don't.

In point of fact, their meeting in finals has been extremely infrequent.

First time out, in the Scottish Cup final of 1903, was as near as Hearts were to get to success.

Perhaps as a hopeful omen the match was played at Parkhead, or rather the three matches were, for after a 1-1 draw and a goalless one Rangers won at the third try by 2-0.

They did so despite playing for 75 minutes with only 10 men.

For the first, but assuredly not for the last, time Hearts would appear to be in awe of the occasion and of this particular opposition.

Three-quarters of a century passed before the teams met again, in the famous final of 1976 which was lost before the official kick-off time when, the game having started at two minutes to three, Derek Johnstone was so disobliging as to score in the very first minute of play.

Later, he got another, and Alex MacDonald a third, so that Shaw's goal for Hearts in the dying minutes was nothing more than a footballing fig leaf.

There matters rested until May of this year, when Rangers inflicted such a drubbing that perhaps the main question to be resolved this Sunday will be whether the Hearts scars have even begun to heal.

They had approached the game with not unreasonable confidence, for alone of Scottish clubs they had twice beaten Rangers in the league.

On the day they were destroyed.

Rousset in goal made a ghastly rickets of a Laudrup hit and hoper, their youngsters, Ritchie, McManus and Johnston, seemed paralysed by the occasion, while veterans Colquhoun and Mackay hovered despairingly on the fringe of the action.

The only previous meeting in this competition was in 1961 and Hearts did well enough in the first match at Hampden, fighting back to equalise a Jimmy Millar strike with a late John Cumming penalty.

They then shared a footnote in Scottish football history when the replay took place more than seven weeks later, the gap being caused by World Cup fixtures.

By then the crowd seems to have forgotten what it was all about, there were only 47,000 at the replay as opposed to 88,000 the first time round.

The players had remembered though, with four goals in the first 19 minutes, but as three of them went to Rangers that was the end of that.

One hundred plus years and no wins remains a baffling statistic.

From 1956 to '61 Hearts were consistently the best team in Scotland and since then they have twice come within a hairsbreadth of winning the league.

Nobody would grudge Hearts a win.

They do always have to travel to Glasgow for such matches.

They suspect Glasgow of refusing to recognise Edinburgh's football achievements.

If Hearts can give us an achievement to recognise, I'm confident that the Glasgow media will be more than magnanimous enough to mark the turn of the century.

Taken from the Herald