Glorious season is captured for posterity, but best is yet to come

THREE weeks on from Hearts' Scottish Cup final victory, there are many supporters who want the celebrations to continue for some time yet. The club catered for them yesterday at the Dominion Cinema in Edinburgh with the launch of Glorious: The Romanov Revolution, a two-hour-long DVD account of the season just ended.

In many respects it follows the familiar formula of such documentaries: match footage, interviews with players and staff, and cutaway shots of jubilant fans.

Most significantly, however, it ends with assertions both by Roman Romanov, the club chairman and son of Vladimir, and by Valdas Ivanauskas, the acting head coach, that the exuberant ending to this season should be regarded as just the start.

Finishing second and thereby getting into the qualifying rounds of the Champions League should not be thought of as an end in itself, the two insist in their different ways.

"It's a very big season - for the future," says Ivanauskas, who took over from Graham Rix at a critical stage of the campaign, when the cup semi-final against Hibs was looming and Rangers were closing the gap in the race for second place in the SPL behind champions elect Celtic. The win against Aberdeen which clinched the runners-up spot was, he made plain, a bigger game for the club than the cup final win over Gretna, although he does accept the importance of Hearts' first trophy in eight years to the supporters.

For Romanov junior, the important message to get across is that, at the end of his father's first full season in control of the club, there will be no deviating from the long-term plan first to establish Hearts as rivals to the Old Firm and then have them overtake the Glaswegian duo. He believes that the season just ended could in fact have been more successful.

"Vladimir's goal was to win the championship, and we thought we could catch Rangers and Celtic by surprise," Roman says. "So in finishing second we feel we didn't achieve what Vladimir wanted."

Just what could have been achieved had the apparent stability of the early season been maintained is a moot point, and one which will be a matter for debate for some time to come. For the Romanovs, George Burley had to go, despite his success, while Rix also had to depart because he was not getting the right results.

"It is too bad we had to make so many changes, but they were all necessary," Roman says. "If you see a problem you need to solve it. Sometimes if you wait too long it might be too late."

Steven Pressley, however, while accepting the club owner's right to make such decisions, recalls the undefeated spell under Burley as the most enjoyable of his career. Assistant manager John McGlynn, too, looks back on that time, when Hearts won their first eight games in the SPL and were unbeaten until after Burley had gone, with fondness and a certain regret at their passing.

"We were bitterly disappointed to see him go," Pressley said. "In a short period at the club he had achieved a real rapport with the players.

For McGlynn, who stepped into the breach when Burley went on the morning of a league match, "the timing was the thing. I've never seen anything like that in football on the morning of a game."

Other controversies receive less attention, as, understandably, Glorious concentrates on the up side of Hearts' season. Although an independent production by Rob McLean and Colin Davidson for the club, it uses Setanta footage, and Hearts supporters can relive every goal their side scored.

They no doubt have less desire to relive some of the defeats, and it is debatable whether, for instance, Rangers' goals in the meaningless last game of the season had to be included.

Such footage does at least help the DVD to its generous length, but the piece as a whole could have done with more of the previously unseen footage from around the cup final with which it ends. The scenes inside the team bus on the return from Hampden are particularly amusing, especially the sight of Ivanauskas, smiling and perhaps suitably refreshed, singing along with his players to the Hearts song.

• Glorious: The Romanov Revolution is out now.

Taken from the Scotsman