GIVEN the turnover in personnel at Hearts, it comes as no surprise that there are few people at the club today who were there when the team last played in a Scottish Cup final. Neil McCann, back on the books but currently injured, was part of the side in the 2-1 win over Rangers in 1998, but otherwise the only link with that day is Robbie Neilson.

As a member of the youth team then, the right-back clearly had a minimal role compared to that of the international winger, but his reaction then says a lot about what the Edinburgh club has gone through. "I was young at the time and I just thought this kind of thing happened all the time," Neilson recalled yesterday. "I soon realised it doesn't. We've got to semi-finals, but we've not been to a final since then.

"A club of Hearts' calibre should be fighting for honours every year. With the changes at the club I think it's onwards and upwards, and I think we'll see more trophies coming into the trophy cabinet."

Those few sentences constitute a brief modern history of Hearts: the jubilation of 1998; the realisation soon afterwards that the team was breaking up and that playing standards were dropping; then, with Vladimir Romanov's takeover, the rebirth of hope.

Tomorrow, the majority of the Hampden crowd will be turning up not so much in hope as in the expectation of a victory for the SPL side, but Neilson warned that Gretna should not be written off. "They're not just going to turn up and roll over," he said, continuing the anti-complacency theme which Hearts have been stressing all week. "It's good for Scottish football what they've done.

"There's a lot of players down there who are better quality than the Second Division. It's a big catchment area for fans, as I know from my time on loan at Queen of the South."

Although in the past dismissed as part of the supporting cast at Hearts, Neilson has improved considerably since that spell on loan at Palmerston Park, and has taken part in every game this season bar the match at Ibrox last Sunday, when nine first-team regulars were rested. "With the standard of player coming in, training has gone up a notch or two, and I think that has pulled me along with it," he said.

Eight years ago, although just spectators on the Saturday, Neilson and his young colleagues did have their moment in the sun the following day back at Tynecastle, when they paraded the SFA Youth Cup at the same time as the senior side showed off the Scottish Cup itself. This weekend, the bearded defender hopes to be back celebrating again at the club's ground, this time as one of the big boys.

Taken from the Scotsman