Foundation's worthy attempts uncover ugly financial reality for Hearts fanbase

APPARENTLY there is a shade more than 70,000 names registered on Hearts' database.

The club can mobilise 25,000, easily, for a cup final. Average attendances at Tynecastle are around 12,500 if you subtract the away numbers, and they shift around 10,000 season tickets. All of those are impressive figures. But then there's the number that's quite a lot smaller than any of those: the 4000 who have so far pledged to put their hand in their pocket in aid of The Foundation of Hearts (FoH), the umbrella group desperately trying to find a means to save the club and give it a future.

Why such a low percentage of a pretty vast fanbase? This isn't a criticism of the support or FoH, whose hierarchy are clearly doing everything they can to save the club they love, but it's significant all the same.

What it suggests is that even for a worthy and transparently "good" cause there has been an inadequate take-up from the very people to whom all sides have turned.

Last week Hearts had the gall to attribute their latest round of headaches to the fans for showing "hesitation" and "inaction", namely for buying only 7000 season tickets so far when the club needed to sell closer to 10,000. That was in an unattributed official statement.

David Southern, the beleaguered managing director, was noticeably more sensitive and understanding on the issue, making a point of saying the club urgently needed the fans' money but had no right to expect or demand it.

The FoH, too, hope that the faithful will cough up around £25 as a one-off payment and then perhaps a monthly contribution of £10, £20, £100, whatever, to enrol in a membership scheme.

Membership could provide permanent and parallel income alongside season-ticket money in the event of FoH gaining control of the club. It's a sensible and feasible plan if backed in sufficient numbers but the masses aren't exactly forming a queue to hand over their cash. FoH have said 4000 isn't enough. It's not even close.

The worry is that many fans have the best of intentions but little left to back them up. In the past 12 months they've bought 2012-13 season tickets, been milked for all the slew of other products fans are bombarded with these days, been asked to put money into a begging bowl to meet Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) bills, pumped in more than £1m in a share issue, bought those 7000 season tickets for next season, and had director Sergejus Fedotovas telling them they'd have to fill £1.5m of a projected £2.5m shortfall for the year to June 2014 (the other £1m would come from moving out players). Fedotovas also used last month's annual meeting to float the idea of a fans' membership scheme run by the club itself, which must have sounded about as enticing to them as dousing their money in petrol and reaching for the Swan Vestas.

The problem shared by Hearts and the FoH, which aims to oust and replace the club's useless current ownership, is that fans are not a bottomless well or a golden teat. They have mortgages, childcare costs and holidays to pay for, perhaps while coping with pay cuts or freezes and a rising cost of living.

For many fans, a season ticket is their big financial commitment to their club. They don't bargain for, or necessarily have the means for, season tickets plus membership fees, plus share issues, plus one-off bailouts, plus, plus, plus . . .

All FoH can do is cross their fingers and plead. At least they have the stomach to see this through, which is more than can be said for sure about the reported interest of Scandinavian and American consortia in buying the club.

Hearts could be in administration soon after June 24 when the next wages are due to non-playing staff (the latest wages to players and almost half of an HMRC bill are unpaid). Administration would be complicated and deeply worrying. An administrator would try to sell Hearts, but UBIG owns 50% of it and doesn't seem to currently have a management structure capable of agreeing a sale, while Ukio Bankas owns 29.9% plus Tynecastle and is in administration itself. Hearts need £500,000 simply to limp to day one of next season in six-and-a-half weeks.

An administrator might regard it as touch-and-go. A harrowing cull of the 150 staff would be unavoidable and he would have to take a cold, unemotional look at the FoH and decide if they have the resources to pay for a buyout and ongoing running costs.

Good luck to The Foundation of Hearts, who must plough on down the only route open to them. But what desperate times these are when even those who love Hearts the most might not have enough left to give.

And Another Thing . . .

Even allowing for Gary Mackay calling the club's senior officials "despicable" the other day, Hearts have been a bastion of civility compared to a couple of others. The reluctance to entirely turn on Vladimir Romanov is a consequence of Hearts winning two cups and competing in Champions League qualifiers under his watch.

At Rangers, and now Kilmarnock, criticism and accusations fly unhindered. Kilmarnock's statement yesterday, alleging that supposed saviour Marie Macklin intended to bulldoze Rugby Park and move the club elsewhere, was incendiary. That one's going to be messy.

Kieran Prior has suddenly emerged as someone with plenty to say for himself given he owns a miniscule share of Rangers, just 1.4%. Prior's sudden profile is symptomatic of a club still riven by issues, problems and division.

More influential figures around Ibrox may privately welcome his views but they confirm one thing above all: Rangers haven't finishing washing their dirty laundry in public.

Taken from the Herald