Hearts' class of 1914 holds lessons for league leaders

STUART BATHGATE

THE fact that this is Hearts' best start to a league campaign since 1914 speaks volumes about the speed with which George Burley has transformed the side since taking over in the close season. But it is also, in equal measure, a telling reminder of how good that team of 91 years ago was during its cruelly brief flourishing.

Good sides have grown up at Tynecastle from time to time during the intervening period. Yet even the great team of the 1950s, they won domestic honours aplenty, never matched the eight-win start to the season achieved by their forebears as Europe plummeted into the horrors of the First World War.

In contrast to the squad which is now just beginning to be built, the one which embarked on a pre-season trip to Denmark in the summer of 1914 was the culmination of a decade's careful planning. John McCartney, the manager, had been assembling what he termed a "combination" of mutually complementary players for some time; when they defeated the Danish national side, he knew he was close to achieving his goal.

There was, however, one fascinating similarity between the two periods - namely, the intervention of a Russian-born financier after the club had got into severe monetary difficulties. Vladimir Romanov, Hearts' major shareholder, is now the man providing Burley with the funds to build up the squad, whereas back then it was a young supporter called Elias Furst who turned the club round.

Furst did not enjoy access to the kind of fortune at Romanov's disposal, but in 1905 he did re-establish the club on a sound financial footing after it had come close to folding. Nine years on from that crisis Furst was on the board of directors, taking a quiet satisfaction in the way in which his labours behind the scenes had provided the stable conditions in which the team could grow.

While Furst and McCartney knew they were on to something good, there was - in another similarity with the present day - widespread scepticism about Hearts' ability to mount a serious challenge. That scepticism was in part understandable: after all, Bobby Walker, hailed by many at the time as the best player in the world, had just retired. Yet, once the season started, few complaints were heard from the club's supporters about the absence of the great Walker, so smoothly did his replacement, Harry Wattie, slot into the side.

McCartney had been insisting for years that he was building a side to win the league, receiving little but mockery in return. When his team won the Dunedin Cup with a 6-0 humbling of a Hibs side reputed to have the best defence in the country, however, the sceptics had to take notice - and they paid a lot more attention when victory followed victory in the league.

Hearts beat Celtic, Raith Rovers, Third Lanark, Kilmarnock, St Mirren, Rangers, Ayr United and Aberdeen in their first eight league fixtures, exhibiting what one newspaper report of the time called "dainty, dazzling forward play". Then, with mounting injury problems, they lost 3-2 at Dumbarton. That should have been a blip, but then came the recruitment drive for the war in Europe, and most of the playing staff joined up.

Jack Alexander's book McCrae's Battalion is a monumental work of research into that particular army unit, which many Hearts players and supporters joined along with employees and adherents of other clubs. His investigations revealed that, although at first based at home for their army training and thus available to play on a Saturday, the men were increasingly in no fit state to do so.

"By 20 February when they went to Ibrox, for example, half the side were unwell because of inoculations they had received," Alexander explains. "They could knock you flat on your back in those days. The enlisted men had also been out on a route march the night before and had got no sleep. They were 4-0 down, got it back to 4-3, then hit the post in the last minute."

Besides their sheer ability, Hearts kept themselves in contention by showing the sort of commitment to the cause which many of their number would later demonstrate in an altogether more serious fashion. In the end, though, they could not sustain their challenge. The record books for that season show that Celtic won the league with 65 points to Hearts' 61. What they do not and cannot show is the massive promise with which the Tynecastle team played - promise that would come to nought as, one by one, they were killed or seriously injured in the war.

Jim Speedie, a left winger who had joined the Cameron Highlanders before Sir George McCrae formed his battalion, was the first to die on duty. He was killed 90 years ago this week, at the Battle of Loos.

Less than a year later, at the French village of Contalmaison on the first day of the Somme, McCrae's paid a terrible price, and Wattie was one of many fatalities. That same year, the playmaker Tom Gracie was sent home from his regiment in France and died of leukemia.

"Tom Gracie had been the crucial link that made McCartney's combination work," Alexander says.

"Harry Wattie might have been a truly great player, but he never had the chance to make his mark.

"I don't think there can be any doubt that it was the best team in Hearts' history. It was on the verge of becoming a side strong enough to win several championships."

Thanks to Alexander and his colleagues, there is now a permanent memorial to McCrae's battalion at Contalmaison. Visitor numbers to the village have grown so much that the site is being extended. A bucket collection to help fund that expansion will be taken before today's game with Rangers.

Taken from the Scotsman