Foundation of Hearts have to take control for good of the club

MATTHEW HAROLD is a Hearts fan who writes a column called Heart of the Matter every week in the Edinburgh Now newspaper.

TODAY sees the closing date for applications to become the preferred bidder to take control of Hearts once the club finds its way out of administration.

With many parties popping their heads up and down in the media then disappearing, the Foundation of Hearts should be the ones who take over.

They have the best interests of the club at heart because they are made up of Hearts supporters and therefore don’t see it as just a business, but an institution that has to be preserved for future generations.

But gaining control may be the easiest part. Afterwards there are some huge obstacles they need to negotiate to get the club back on its feet – and that starts with the depleted playing staff.

That has to be brought to a sustainable level and not the revolving door situation which engulfed the squad during the 2006/07 campaign, when it seemed that almost every week there was six or more changes to the starting line-up.

The club also has to deal with the huge elephant in the room – the main stand of Tynecastle. It has been at the centre of most of the club’s problems for well over a decade and needs to be addressed in the near future.

Either there has to be some plan for that area of the stadium or movement has to be made to relocate the club to a suitable area in the city and not go back to the pie-in-the-sky plans of Chris Robinson to move to Murrayfield.

If control over Hearts is gained by the Foundation, then they will need to show vision and forward-
thinking in order to help the club prosper and thrive, something the last two regimes sorely lacked during their tenures.

There needs to be movement to make the stadium something that isn’t just a venue visited by 13,000 every fortnight – but something that can generate revenue for the club every day of the week.

Not having extra streams of revenue during the close season is undoubtedly going to hinder the ability to operate on a sound financial footing. Any type of extra money is always valuable.

Should the club be fan-run and start to get back to the position it once had in the hierarchy of Scottish football, then another potential issue may arise, that is of an outside party coming in an offering to invest in the club. Although this may seem a good option at the time, fans will need to stay strong and hold on to their convictions, because any disillusion of their power may seem like a good move, but it would show the kind of short-termism that has suffocated Scottish football over recent years.

Staying the course may not see silverware arrive in Gorgie for a while but what it would do is to secure the future of the club in the hands of the people who care for it the most, the people who have bought the shares, season tickets and the merchandise. The fans deserve the major voice in how their club is run.

The Foundation of Hearts should be given the opportunity to prove they can lead the club for years to come.

Taken from the Daily Record