‘I can’t have lost my ability’ - Hearts 16y/o Celtic slayer on rise again after kick in the teeth
Former Tynecastle starlet refusing to give up on dreams
If someone was asked eight years ago to pinpoint the young midfielder most likely to spearhead a Hearts title push further down the line, few would have looked beyond the talented Harry Cochrane. Instead, it’s one of his best friends who has been summoned to fill the void left by Cammy Devlin’s extended absence due to injury as the league leaders look to negotiate the run-in.
The speed with which Hearts moved to tie up former academy player Marc Leonard’s loan deal from Birmingham City took many by surprise, including old pal Cochrane. The pair were at Rangers together when very young and then shared digs in Balerno having made the move east to Hearts.
“Marc is one of my best pals,” says Cochrane, having made a mental note to scold Leonard for being so secretive. “I played with him from when I was about eight or nine at boys’ club level and then I stayed with him as well. He hadn’t actually said anything to me, I only just found out through someone else texting me! I hadn’t heard anything.”
He remembers the photograph that started circulating on social media on Friday, as reports Leonard was returning to Tynecastle intensified: “Aye, the one with the scarf?” They were celebrating signing their first professional contract at Hearts. Leonard was spirited away to Brighton & Hove Albion without a first-team appearance to his name just weeks after Cochrane enjoyed his breakthrough moment at the club. Sunday’s clash between Hearts and Celtic, the teams currently sitting first and second in the league, is a reminder of a memorable ‘I was there’ moment in Gorgie.
The stopwatch had just edged into the 26th minute on Sunday 17 December 2017 when Cochrane, then just 16, controlled Don Cowie's cutback from the right before thrashing the ball past Craig Gordon with his left foot from just inside the box. The goal that saw him become Hearts’ youngest-ever league scorer was the opener in an eventual 4-0 win as Brendan Rodgers suffered a first domestic defeat one season and a half into his first spell at Parkhead.
It’s a long time ago now. Rodgers has since left and come back again and left again. And Cochrane? Well, while the temptation might be to ask whatever happened to the wunderkind, any implication that he has somehow wasted his significant talent or got too big for his boots couldn’t be further from the truth.
The way he has stuck to his task and built a career that looks to be on the rise again at Championship promotion contenders Arbroath strikes me as somewhat heroic. Already notable for being the first SFA Performance School graduate to start a top-flight game, against Dundee at Dens Park in September 2017, the still boyish-looking midfielder is now a poster boy for bloody minded persistence and never giving up on your dreams.
‘I can’t have lost my ability!’
As James McFadden noted in commentary during Arbroath’s televised 1-1 draw with Morton in near unplayable conditions at Gayfield on Friday night, Cochrane deserves enormous credit. “It would have been very easy for him to fall out of the game after all the early hype,” the BBC Scotland pundit noted.
Cochrane’s breakthrough in the Hearts first team even caught the attention of Italian giants Juventus, who made enquiries. Rather than an albatross around his neck, the goal he scored against Celtic has been an easily accessible source of comfort. Whenever he’s feeling a bit low, he simply searches for it on YouTube.
“Sometimes when I see it, I think, ‘well, I can’t have lost my ability!’” he says. “It was more when I was playing at Queen of the South and I was not doing so well. In that environment, where it is more of a fight than actually football, it drags you down with it. It is hard to work your way back up. Arbroath have obviously given me the chance to go and play again in the Championship and if I could get back to the level I was playing at when I was 16, that would be absolutely brilliant for me. I don’t think it is impossible. Obviously it will take a lot of hard work. I’ve just got to keep grinding.
“I definitely think since I have been at Arbroath my confidence has grown,” he adds. On the question of whether he could have done the job for Hearts that Leonard had been signed to do, he’s realistic. “Obviously Marc has been playing at a different level from what I have been,” he says. “Even when he was at Northampton from what I have seen and heard he was probably one of their best players at the time he was there. He is really deserving of the move. And I have no doubt in my mind that Marc can play at an even higher level than Hearts. I just hope he goes there and does really well and kicks on again.
“I still talk to him,” he adds. “It’s not an everyday thing now. You’ve probably realised that I am quite bad at putting on my phone and getting back to people! My life is a bit chaotic these days!”
Ambition to return full-time
He can say that again. Now 24 and living in Kilmarnock, which means he negotiates a near five-hour round trip from Ayrshire to Angus for each home game, he also has two children with partner Caitlin, including a seven-week-old daughter Lottie. Albie, their son, is three and we’re speaking just after Cochrane has picked him up from nursery on Friday via a haircut ahead of the televised game later that night. He’s now getting it in the neck from Caitlin, a nurse, because it’s too short. Life, he happily admits, is full on even if he’s ostensibly a part-time footballer for the time being.
He was straight with Arbroath co-managers David Gold and Colin Hamilton: “I spoke to Hammy and Goldie when I signed there that this was my ambition was to go back to full time. Hopefully I do well enough at Arbroath that I get another full-time team.” It’s not beyond the realms that this team could be his present one, depending on what happens in the promotion run-in. Whatever happens, he will have options as a free agent in the summer.
He's not averse to taking risks. He’s prepared to back himself. That’s what he did when walking out of Tynecastle after making only one appearance in his last two seasons at the club in between loan spells at Dunfermline and Montrose. After the love he felt from Craig Levein, it wasn’t quite the same when Robbie Neilson returned following Daniel Stendel’s short stint in charge.
“They offered me another year at the end of my contract, but I was not really promised much in terms of a plan or game-time,” he recalls. “Obviously you are never guaranteed you are going to play but at the time my relationship with the manager, not the club, wasn’t great.
“There was nothing sinister,” he clarifies. “It’s just that I wanted to play and I wasn’t getting a game. So I told him I wanted to play and I was told I wasn’t going to play. When the extra year came up I just thought I’d rather go and play regular football. That is all you want to do as a player, you want to play. So when you are told you are not going to play it is a bit of a kick in the teeth. But it’s a game of opinions.”
He pursued a trial opportunity at Portsmouth but left halfway through the intended two-week stay and ended up at Queen of the South, who were relegated to the third tier at the end of his first season. Admirably he stuck with it, even being made captain.
But it was a young team and he didn’t always enjoy the weight of responsibility. The situation is very different at Arbroath, where Cochrane, who’s just passed the 200 career appearances mark, is comfortably out-veteraned by the 38-year-old Ryan Flynn in the middle of midfield.
“That’s what Flynny calls me, the 24-year-old veteran!” he says, before adding: “Obviously it is good to have memories, that’s why you play football. You want to have things like that (the goal v Celtic) to look back on. Thankfully I have got one. But I don’t want to stop there, Alan. I want to make more memories. I want to keep going.”
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