Alan Pattullo: Here’s hoping Hearts can make history

Published on Monday 20 August 2012 01:42

ONE of the many intriguing aspects to the forthcoming Hearts versus Liverpool Europa League play-off tie is just how few connections there are between the clubs.

Normally, when two clubs with such distinguished histories meet, there is a rubbing of hands on the sports desks of newspapers in anticipation of the mounds of copy which can be produced by looking back at previous meetings.

Not so on this occasion, with the teams having not met since the late 1920s. Only once since have Liverpool visited Tynecastle, playing an Edinburgh Select side there in 1958. There is even a scarcity of former players with links to both clubs, hence Aidan Smith’s fine piece with the great former Hearts forward Alex Young that was published in The Scotsman on Saturday. Young’s main connection to Liverpool is as an Evertonian who regularly caused the Anfield side problems when the teams met in the Sixties.

The tie has captured the imagination and Liverpool will not relish arriving at a partisan Tynecastle on Thursday, on the back of a resounding 3-0 defeat to West Bromwich Albion on Saturday in new manager Brendan Rodgers’ first league match in charge.

Let’s just hope Hearts are able to mount a strong enough challenge against their English opponents to ensure those reporters looking back at this pair of fixtures in years to come can recollect encounters where the underdogs managed to give a good ­account of themselves.