Quick rant about Scottish football

I’ve always taken a sadistic pleasure in knocking the SPL ever since I met Jonathan, who has the pleasure of supporting Glasgow Celtic. Celtic are a team rich in tradition and history but also a team, in recent times, rich in the embarrassments and miseries that fuel the banter of football fans around the world. Telfer, Dublin and Virgo, Doctor Jo and Jon Barnes, the night that saw, “Super Cally go ballistic,,” have presented me with enough ammunition to survive at least 5 relegations in my eyes. Maybe six if I’m lucky.......

To put it another way, I held the SPL in a very low light but was willing to sample it firsthand recently in a trip to the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, to see if my short sighted opinion was in any way truthful.

With both alternative solutions, Hibs and Dundee United, playing away from home it was the Jam Tarts of Hearts that got the nod for my first Scottish football experience. Things did not start well with the far from enjoyable 35 minute queue to get tickets. For some reason I thought we would be presented with the familiar turnstiles of my youth but was dismayed by the snaking line coming from the ticket office. Bad times indeed.

Once in Tynecastle though I noticed how intimate the stadium was and how close we were to the action. We had somehow managed to get tickets in the singing section of the stadium and found ourselves smiling as the Hearts faithful belted out hit after hit during the match.
The match itself was a shocker in many respects. Hearts were clearly the better of their opponents, St Mirren, even before the sending off of Spaniard Tonet. Hearts had so much of the ball but failed to create any clear cut chances or use the ball effectively. To be honest some of the passing was poor but the crowd seemed far from annoyed with this, almost as if it was part and parcel of the game and was to be expected. It took a moment of speculative magic from the young striker Mole to give us and the Hearts fans the deserved reward for a first half full of energy and commitment but lacking in genuine quality.

The second half saw Hearts nearly throw away the game to their opponents, even letting them back into a match that by all rights should have been dead and buried by 60 minutes. St Mirren grabbed a scrappy equaliser but eventually Hearts possession paid off and two penalties, with one scored, giving the home team a thoroughly deserved win.

The football was far from magic at times but was played with passion, commitment and fairness, qualities often missing from the spectacle that is the English Premier League. I would definitely go again, but maybe not for £24!