Not quite the complete Champions League experience

THIS was the Promised Land without the trimmings, although it came at a premium price. We got the £5 match programme and the laminated passes. But Edinburgh was denied the full Champions League experience, for now. Handel was not playing ball. Or, at least, UEFA wasn't.

A decree had apparently come from on high denying teams in the qualifying rounds the right to use the officially endorsed orchestral version of Handel's Zadok the Priest, as heard before the kind of appetising encounter that UEFA clearly did not want contaminated by association with the lesser lights. They might have had a point.

The motivation for Hearts' desperate and ultimately rewarding struggle to reach the Champions League last season was based around the sheer exclusiveness of the competition. Piping the theme music into grounds from Shelbourne to Siroki Brijeg would erode much of the stardust away from what UEFA are trying to achieve with their premier club competition. Instead we got Hector Nicol's much-loved warbling of The Hearts Song, and the same old routine at first helped prompt a rather ordinary performance from a Hearts team which required an own goal from their opponents to fully rouse them.

With its attractive design and more than adequate capacity Murrayfield could have carried off the complete Champions League experience, even if the quality of the play on the park might have betrayed the stadium. But a blast of Handel could not have made this feel like an encounter worthy of Champions League status. Hearts began like a train, and the train hit the buffers somewhere outside Haymarket.

A crowd of more than 28,000 did their best to lift their heroes and deserved better than a game where Hearts struggled for long stretches. They certainly deserved better than the 100 per cent price hike in the matchday programme from last season. Permitted, at least, to include the Champions League logo on the cover, Hearts suddenly felt able to ask fans to pay £5 for a publication that somehow found it relevant to print a full page picture of Harald Schumacher. He once clattered into Patrick Battiston. Who once played for Bordeaux. Who Hearts once played in a European tie. You get the idea. Space. Filling.

But the vibe was good inside a stadium which could never disgrace a Champions League encounter, and the time when Murrayfield will resound to Handel's masterpiece could yet be drawing nearer after three second-half strikes without reply.

Another page in the Hearts programme was used to advertise hospitality boxes at the next round, something that might well feature a more Champions League-worthy opponent. Arsenal and Inter Milan are among those who might be hosted at Murrayfield, although, as the advert is careful to point out, those paying in advance will receive a full refund if the fixture "does not materialise". These aristocrats of the game won't be stepping out at Pecara Stadium, on the banks of the Listica River, it seems safe to assume.

The wait for the real stuff to begin will be worth it for those Hearts fans who last night witnessed their team in what amounts to the European Cup, something that only fans of a certain age could say they had experienced. The competition has changed beyond recognition since 1960, when Hearts last participated. Then the opponents were Benfica, a giant of the game. The identity of last night's opponents suggested why FIFA were reluctant to slip Handel's biggest hit - now known as The Theme Tune to the Champions League - into a sleeve and send it post haste to Tynecastle. Or Murrayfield.

Perhaps that was the problem. With the UEFA-stamped envelope lying unopened on the Tynecastle map the DJ was forced to select another tune to which Hearts could make their entrance. He plumped for Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire, and it did the trick. The atmosphere flared ahead of kick-off even without the ridiculous shaking-of-a-cloth theatrics in the centre circle. Equally impressive was the Bosnian welcome to the fans of HNK Siroki Brijeg, who provided conclusive proof of the onset of global warming by becoming the first set of continental fans to sit topless at a Scottish football match. They were cherishing the experience of being at a game where more than 5,000 were present, the normal number attracted to their own stadium.

They had travelled more in hope than anticipation, and were startled by more than just the beer prices in Edinburgh. For nearly an hour their side had held Hearts, a side who their team's coach had reasoned must be good because they finished above Glasgow Rangers. At times this was a performance which recalled some of Rangers' more supine efforts on the European stage, but Hearts did what they did last season and held their nerve.

A clean sheet was just as satisfactory as the three goals scored. Handel could yet join the smell of hops in the west Edinburgh air.

Taken from the Scotsman