Hearts: Budge era begins amid party spirit
The Peebles contingent and around two and a half thousand other Hearts fans were on their way to observe the end of one era – their club’s 31-year stay in the top flight of Scottish football – and to celebrate the beginning of another – Budge’s takeover. Relegation usually causes an outbreak of despondency for a team and its fans, and certainly the last time Hearts went down, the club’s fortunes both on and off the field looked bleak. But not now.
To an extent, the attitude of those fans is about making a virtue out of necessity: the song about being there when the Hearts go up to lift the Ramsdens Cup was an example of that. But the outbreak of militant joy we have seen in the Tynecastle club’s support over the past six weeks or so has little to do with gallows humour, and goes well beyond mere defiance.