GRAHAM RIX knows the score. He has, after all, been round more than a few blocks in his time.

Whilst the mild spring mornings, when they finally arrive, are habitually characterised by birds chirping and crisp sunshine, they also signal the last straight for footballers peering ahead to the end of an exhausting season.

They don't come any more demanding than season 2005-06 for Hearts, and Rix is aware of what may await him at the season's end. More pertinently, he is fully prepared to confront it.

Having moved heaven and earth to become the head coach of Hearts last November, the Englishman's fate beyond the summer rests squarely with the club's majority shareholder, Vladimir Romanov.

Rix's unassuming manner has cultivated many at both Tynecastle and Riccarton since he arrived in Edinburgh, and it is that mantra which has prevented him from looking beyond the conclusion of his six-month Hearts contract.

He will forever be gracious towards Romanov for the opportunity to work again at a period in his life when he was craving day-to-day football involvement the way a heroin addict does a fix. The coming weeks through to May 13 will ultimately ordain whether Rix stays or goes, and should he find himself in club suit resplendent with maroon flower fastened to the button hole leading Hearts out at the Scottish Cup final, the Englishman's bargaining power will have taken on significant extra force.

That possibility, and the prospect of a Champions League berth via second place in the SPL, are the stated aims. But then Rix is seeking not only to convince Romanov, for there are others within football, particularly in his native south, who still require to be persuaded.

"So I've only got a deal till the summer," he says with a shrug of his shoulders. "You could get a ten-year deal and then lose your first five games and get the sack. If the boys here do it and have a successful season, and I believe they will, then that's great for them. It's also great for me, because I'll get my credibility back.

"Not that I ever had doubts in my own head about my credibility, but in the eyes of other people I might get it back. I'm not lying awake worrying about what will happen to me in the summer. I'd love to stay here because it's a great club, but it's not my decision. I just hope to influence it by leading this club to success."

Proving that he can walk the walk won't suddenly bring Manchester United running with an offer to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson, but it is for the people of Hearts and for his own integrity that Rix is working. Few others matter at the moment.

"No matter what you do, you should give it your best shot and have no regrets. I always remember my dad saying to me when I left home aged 16 to join Arsenal: 'Make sure you don't have any regrets. Don't you dare come back here in two years' time wishing you'd done this or that.' He was right, and that's what this is for me at Hearts."

The influence of his father, Alan, shaped much of Rix's career from his early years in Campsall, the tiny south Yorkshire mining village where he grew up in a council house with his parents and younger brother and sister.

Indeed, as he poured through a sepia-tinted memory bank of childhood memories and evoked images that would do justice to a television advert for Hovis, two characteristics stood out as they do to this day. Dedication and passion.

"First thing in the morning, mum would ask me to go up to the Co-op to get a pint of milk. I'd have a ball with me, kicking against the wall and the kerb as I'm going up. That was all I ever did.

"Because Campsall was a coal-mining village, that's how everybody earned their living. My dad didn't, fortunately [Alan Rix earned £40 a week as a fitter at Doncaster power station]. But most of my mates went down the pit. That's how it was.

"We were all football-daft. Leeds United were the big team at the time and they were my team. I had posters of Eddie Gray on my wall. Johnny Giles, Mick Jones, Alan Clark, I can name the whole team. Mum and dad used to come and wake me if there were highlights of a midweek game on the telly, this was in the Inter-cities Fairs Cup days. Even though I had school the next day and I'd been in bed since about nine o'clock, at half ten when the highlights came on they used to wake me up and say, 'come on, come down and watch Leeds'.

"I was just football daft like everybody else where I came from. I always thought, 'who the hell is going to see us here, a little pit village in south Yorkshire?' Yet, at the age of 12 there were people knocking on the door. Sheffield United came looking for me, Doncaster Rovers too. But one of the earliest clubs to express an interest was Arsenal."

Rix first encountered Highbury as a skinny 12-year-old. "The place took my breath away," he admits, although he didn't formally sign for Arsenal until the age of 15. "It's different now because kids are more worldly wise due to technology and other advances in society, but in 1974 for a little south Yorkshire boy to go down to London by himself it was a hell of a step."

One he coped with admirably, due in no small part to an inner-built devotion that would lead him to replace the legendary George Armstrong on Arsenal's left wing. In all, Rix made 474 appearances and scored 51 times during his 14 years in north London, winning the 1979 FA Cup and playing in the European Cup Winners' Cup final the following season.

The pinnacle of Rix's playing career arguably arrived with his five appearances for England at the 1982 World Cup in Spain. He left Arsenal, having been made captain, to sample the continental influence in 1988.

"I loved France," he says. "I went to play for Caen and was their captain for three years and then I had a year at Le Havre. It was a great time. Initially it was difficult because I was 30 and had three kids by then [with his first wife], and it was a big step for them. A bit like me leaving Campsall at 16. They were leaving London and it opened their eyes." The swansong for Rix the player was an injury-interrupted year at Dundee. His impact on Tayside was minimal given he had reached the veteran age of 35 when he arrived, but the impression made on centre-back Jim Duffy, pictured, was, eventually, to lead to a double act that is now heading football operations at Tynecastle.

"That was where I first met Duff, who was player-coach," smiles Rix. "I had a lot of Achilles problems at Dundee and after I left I didn't really know what to do. I still wanted to play but Glenn Hoddle, having just got Swindon promoted to the Premiership, got the Chelsea job and he phoned me up while I was on holiday with my mum and dad. He said he wanted me to be his youth team coach.

"I told him I wanted to play and I wasn't sure about making a move like that, but he told me to think about it and I talked it over with my dad. The old man got straight to the point. 'How many games have you played in the last four years?' he asked me. I counted up and in total it was about 35. 'Well, don't you think it's time?' Again, he was right."

After heeding the worldly-wise words of his father, Rix embarked upon a coaching career that would see him participate heavily in a revolution at Chelsea, before spells at Portsmouth and Oxford preceded one of the most testing times of his life in Edinburgh.

Taken from the Scotsman