Hearts keen on putting record to bed

IT'S not on a par with some of the bonkers behaviour you get in South American football, nor can it really hold a candle to some of the carry-on in certain, tumultuous corners of eastern Europe. But when it comes to passion overspill on the field of play, the Edinburgh derby can hold its own with anything in this part of the world. Rangers and Celtic, Liverpool and Everton, Manchester United and Arsenal, Arsenal and Spurs. Plenty of badness there. But Hearts and Hibs have long since earned their place in this gallery of fervour.

Last season we saw some amount of intensity on the five occasions they faced each other. Famously, Hearts won the first meeting 4-0 and five men were booked. They rushed out a DVD of the day and called it Demolition Derby, not a business enterprise that was likely to sooth relations between supporters. Hibs won the second and five more yellows and one red were dished-out, all to Hearts players. Edgaras Jankauskas was the man ordered-off after a display of petulance that would have shamed a small boy. Jankauskas hasn't played for his club since that woeful night in Athens at the end of August but he may well make his reappearance this afternoon.

Hibs went to town on their rivals in the aftermath of that match. But Hearts' turn was not long in coming. They won the third derby as convincingly as they had won the first, 4-1, and with it came the release of Demolition Derby II. Goals have defined this fixture - you have to go back 18 games to May 2001 to find the last scoreless meeting - but rarely have the victories come without some controversy attached. There's not been a straightforward meeting of these two for quite a while. There's always some issue, some storm to debate afterwards.

In the last five matches, we had 21 yellow cards and four reds. Taken in isolation, these statistics don't prove much but coupled with the lingering images of pulling and dragging and general turmoil we saw in the games, they're reasonable enough evidence of a pressure-cooker. Or, as Valdas Ivanauskas likes to put, "an emotional, emotional game". The E word was one he used a good dozen times on Friday.

"It's special," says the Hearts manager. "Last season, every game was special. We lost both at Easter Road, we won both at Tynecastle and then there was the game at Hampden, the semi-final. Its emotional, not for me, but for the players. It's a normal game for a manger. I don't show my emotions. It's the players who show emotion. For me it's very important to be ready for this game, to be ready for the fight. Enjoy is a good word. I enjoyed Hampden but I'm not sure you enjoy these games. We play now at Easter Road and I know how difficult it is."

In fact, Hearts have not won at Easter Road since 2002. "It's not easy at Hibs and it's difficult to keep players' emotions down. We play four derbies a year so players know what it's like. Supporters know. The referee is very important in this game, because emotion is very important. Emotion for players, fans, emotion for everybody. It's a derby and the referee must be ready for everything."

You would presume that Ivanauskas has been busy studying his refereeing files, examining the foibles of the man with the whistle this afternoon. Hearts are, after all, the most referee-obsessed club in Scotland, if not the UK, if not in all of Europe. His name? "I don't know who it is," the Lithuanian replies. This is a little hard to fathom. Given Hearts' fondness for crying foul, you'd think they'd have their conspiracy theories prepared in advance. Had we strapped Ivanauskas up to a polygraph machine right there and then we couldn't be sure he'd hold-up under questioning, for Charlie Richmond is the official today and, though he has no great history of trouble with Hearts, there is at least one incident that will be fresh in the mind of Ivanauskas and chums.

Hearts' first defeat of last season came at Easter Road and the first goalscorer that day was Derek Riordan who struck early and whose goal produced an apoplectic reaction from Craig Gordon and some of his defenders. The caretaking team on the touchline - Hearts were then between regimes having just shunted George Burley - didn't appear best pleased at the decision to ignore an offside directly before Riordan fired on goal.

"This is a discussion not just in Scotland, but in England and Germany and everywhere. Every weekend we have discussions about the ref, in international game, too. It's not new. The mistakes they make, I hope these are human mistakes."

His boss, Vladimir Romanov, thinks otherwise, of course. Ivanauskas' predecessors have been slaughtered by the club's owner for an array of perceived crimes but the current manager seems to be getting off lightly, Romanov's ire being reserved, primarily, for officials and us revolutionaries in the media who apparently want nothing more than to see Hearts fail - and fail spectacularly.

Ivanauskas would be as well to keep his latest winning run going just in case, however. Since losing to St Mirren at Tynecastle, they have won three in a row in the SPL, scoring eight and conceding just one. Defensively, they are beginning to look more like the resolute outfit of last season which is just as well for where Hibs are concerned you had better be tight at the back.

Hibs' powers of recovery are well established, their ability to turn a bad result into a fine one in the space of a week a feature of recent seasons. In January they lost 4-1 to Hearts and within days they went to Ibrox in the Cup and won 3-0. They have lost their last two games, to St Mirren and Falkirk, but defeats of that nature normally spark something in them. Whether that spark remains now that Tony Mowbray has departed makes things all the more interesting.

Ivanauskas was asked on Friday to pick out the Hibs men who have caused his team most trouble. "Hibs must think about who are the danger players for us," he replied. When pressed for an answer he eventually said: "The manager was. Tony was.

"Tony was one of the best managers in Hibs' history. I was only talking to him last Sunday at the managers' conference at Gleneagles. I know him well, since his first days in the job when I was manager of Vetra and we played Hibs in the Intertoto Cup. He's a very ambitious manager. A great manager and he deserves to go to West Brom. I wish him good luck. But will him leaving have a big impact on the Hibs players? I don't think so. Maybe if this was just a normal game but it isn't. Every player wants to show how good they are in a derby. It's the first one of the season. They are at home in front of their crowd. Motivation is automatic."

If past form is anything to go by, pandemonium is a certainty too. With the mini-recovery of his team, a little heat has gone out of the Ivanauskas situation of late but the temperature will rise again today. For the manager's sake you hope Mr Romanov remembers to take his chill pills before kick-off.

Taken from the Scotsman