Murrayfield to stage Hearts' European games

HEARTS plan to play future European matches at Murrayfield in a bid to attract bigger crowds and maximise revenue.

With the club hopeful of winning a place in either the Champions League or UEFA Cup next season, they must nominate their home ground by April.

Hearts are committed in the long term to remaining at Tynecastle for domestic games, but they are keen to play matches in Europe on a bigger stage.

They used Murrayfield for three UEFA Cup matches last season, attracting attendances of 18,203, 27,272 and 26,182 against Braga, Schalke and Ferencvaros, respectively. Tynecastle's capacity is just over 17,000.

While the Tynecastle pitch didn't comply with UEFA regulations last season, it has since been modified to make it UEFA Cup compliant but is still too short for the Champions League and extending it further would be too costly, the club has decided.

"We will probably play league games at Tynecastle and European games at Murrayfield or somewhere else because Tynecastle doesn't comply with Champions League requirements," said Roman Romanov, the Hearts chairman. "We looked at extending the pitch but after calculating it, it doesn't make financial sense."

Hearts are currently second in the Bank of Scotland Premierleague, ten points behind Celtic, and six and seven ahead of Hibs and Rangers. The league winners are expected to qualify directly for the group stages of the Champions League with the runners-up going into the second qualifying round. The third-placed team in the SPL will qualify for the UEFA Cup alongside the Scottish Cup winners or runners-up.

Sergejus Fedotovas, a non-executive director, said it was likely Hearts would play at Murrayfield even if they qualified for the UEFA Cup.

The pair were speaking at the club's 100th annual general meeting and the first to take place under the control of Hearts' new Lithuanian owners. It turned out to be a fairly placid affair compared with the stormy gatherings of recent years in the Gorgie Suite. The removal of Chris Robinson as director and chief executive has done much to quell a previously agitated support and the new regime's commitment to Tynecastle - domestically at least - has soothed fevered brows.

It was Robinson who insisted the club must sell their historic home and rent Murrayfield from the Scottish Rugby Union as a last-ditch attempt to reduce crippling debts. The intervention of Vladimir Romanov, Roman's father, halted the sale of Tynecastle and the Russian-born Lithuanian's investment group now owns 80 per cent of Hearts.

Despite Romanov's buy-out, Murrayfield continues to looms large in the club's future. Talks are ongoing with the SRU about Hearts spending a season at the rugby stadium while the main stand at Tynecastle is rebuilt. It is unclear whether it will be next season or 2007-08. Work on a new stand is due to begin when the current season ends but time is running out to receive the necessary planning consents and the club has conceded the project may be delayed.

"We plan to increase Tynecastle's capacity to 25,000 to 26,000 and do it as soon as possible," Roman Romanov said. "We're working very closely with the city council and the architects and we have rough concept of what we want to do.

"We plan to knock down the old stand by the end of the season but the time frame means we could miss the summer and another year is missed. If it's not [started this summer] we'll have to do it in the next break, in 2007."

The current main stand at Tynecastle was built in 1914 at a cost of £12,178 and remains the one side of the ground that has not been rebuilt. The success the club has achieved this season has stimulated huge interest among supporters and almost all games at Tynecastle have been sold out to home fans.

The board is keen to increase the capacity as quickly as possible to capitalise on the renewed interest but is conscious of the disruption caused by uprooting the team from Tynecastle. One option is to remain at the Gorgie ground while the work takes place but the potential loss of revenue is likely to militate against this.

"We'll probably need to move for one season to Murrayfield or play [at Tynecastle] with three stands," Romanov said. "But there are cost implications of playing in front of three stands. We may sell more tickets if we play at Murrayfield."

The formal part of yesterday's agm saw confirmation of the resignation from the board of finance director Stewart Fraser, but he will remain an employee of the club in charge of finance.

The Lithuanian quartet of Roman Romanov, Fedotovas, Liutauras Varanavicius and Julija Goncaruk were all re-elected to the board, and the club's accounts, which showed a pre-tax loss of £2,728,000 for the year ended 31 July 2005, were approved by shareholders.

Following a question from the floor, Hearts also revealed plans to "consolidate" the club's finances with Ukio Banko Investicine Grupe (UBIG), Romanov senior's investment vehicle. Hearts' accounts reveal a net debt of £21.256million, a source of concern for shareholders yesterday, but Romanov junior attempted to allay their fears.

The chairman said the accounts of Hearts and UBIG would become "common" from next year. It effectively means Hearts' debt will be swallowed up into the wider UBIG group, and for as long as that group as a whole remains profitable, Hearts' debt should not cause undue concern.

All this, however, is dependent on the continued enthusiasm of Vladimir Romanov for the Hearts project.

Romanov junior also stressed that UBIG does not plan to keep financing a loss-making Hearts from the profits of other parts of the group and it expects the club to break even. "Vladimir can support the club with his own money but our goal is to make Hearts a balanced company," said the chairman.

Taken from the Scotsman