Swansea fans give Hearts hope and say 'take flight like the Swans'

Craig Swan

THE future is looking particularly bleak at Tynecastle, but fans of Premier League side Swansea have told the Jambos they can recover.
Swansea were facing ruin but recovered and got their hands on the League Cup Swansea were facing ruin but recovered and got their hands on the League Cup

“THINGS are very, very black. We’re very close to the end of the road.” The words of discredited Australian-based Londoner Tony Petty to Swansea fans in 2002.

“We are in a bad place and the job now is to get the club through.” The words of Hearts CEO David Southern in 2013.

While the near-identical sentences chilled the bones of both sets of supporters, Swans Trust spokesman Alan Lewis has sent his own message from south Wales to Scotland’s capital.

He said: “Even in the darkest hours, you can achieve anything. Just look at us.”

Lewis took one look at the situation at Tynecastle yesterday and it snapped his mind back to the events of 11 years ago. Swansea were on the brink. Their Vladimir Romanov at the time was Petty.

Petty had driven the club to near liquidation and there appeared little hope of survival. Supporters wanted him out.

For Foundation of Hearts, read Swans Trust. Galvanised, they grouped, paid Petty off and took control.

It hadn’t been simple and much had been down to former player Mel Nurse, the Donald Ford-type figurehead for City.

He had bought up debt from the previous owners to become the largest creditor a few months earlier, forcing Petty on to the back foot.

When the opening became clear, a takeover from a property developer collapsing and liquidation imminent, Nurse was the man fans could rally round before one final throw of the dice.

The Swans Trust had emerged in the period in which Petty had turned Swansea into something between a national laughing stock and a national concern.

Just like Hearts. The similarities are absolutely frightening. But as Nurse and a handful of others walked away from a Cardiff hotel room, the gloom could begin to lift with a deal done to seal Petty’s exit and a dangerous tax bill was paid.

Hearts are now stuck in exactly the same scenario but Lewis has assured them there is a way out, with Foundation of Hearts the key group. As the Tynecastle fans sink into the turmoil of the latest catastrophe engulfing their club, Swans Trust spokesman Lewis has offered them a huge shaft of light.

He told Record Sport: “I’m conscious of the statements around Hearts at the moment. We’d say get organised and anything is possible.

“It was a similar situation at Swansea where the fans had to do something.

“Even in the darkest hours the reality is things can improve. We are in the Premier League, have won a League Cup and have qualified for Europe.

“The people who did this were not foreign investors, they were local people with the club at heart who got us on to the right financial footing.”

With that, Lewis had said his piece, yet pointed Record Sport back to a comment made by Steve Penny, now a Swansea director.

At the time, Penny was part of the fans group who got control and said: “In the modern world, the club will have to be run prudently.

“The supporters, players, staff and people can be assured that everything possible will be done to ensure the future wellbeing of league football in Swansea which must be good for the city.”

The proof of that is there in black and white for everyone to see. Lewis now says the same picture can be painted in maroon.

Taken from the Daily Record