Hearts hope pitch redraw can bring home Euro games

Just over a year after former chief executive Chris Robinson branded the stadium "not fit for purpose", the club is considering making the changes needed to allow UEFA Cup matches to be played at the ground again.

Hearts staged European games at Murrayfield this season because the pitch at Tynecastle was deemed too short. However, the club experimented yesterday with narrowing and lengthening the surface to make it compliant with UEFA’s minimum requirements.

No structural work would be required to make the changes, but the front row of seats behind each goal would need to be removed, reducing Tynecastle’s capacity by around 500. Narrowing the pitch by two metres on either side would reduce its width to 64 metres but would allow the club to extend safely lengthwise to 100m without impinging on the floodlight stanchions. UEFA’s minimum pitch dimensions are 100m by 64m.

While there remains concern that narrowing the pitch could affect the team’s style of play, there is also a realisation that the majority of Hearts supporters would prefer to see European games played at the more atmospheric Tynecastle than at Murrayfield, which has a capacity of over 67,500 and was less than half full for each of the three UEFA Cup games played there this season.

The news represents a remarkable turnaround for the club. Under Robinson, Hearts were set to leave Tynecastle at the end of this season and play all their matches at Murrayfield. However the appointment last year of George Foulkes as chairman and the arrival this season of Vladimir Romanov have seen these plans abandoned.

Hearts are now committed to staying in Gorgie in the short term at least, and the news that they also want to play their European games in their home of 119 years will be welcomed by supporters.

"The feedback we got from the fans was that while Murrayfield was fine, they’d rather see all the Hearts games played at Tynecastle," Clare Cowan, Hearts’ communications manager, said last night. "But it has to be financially viable and that’s why we’re undertaking what is basically a feasibility study."

Phil Anderton, the club’s new chief executive, spent much of yesterday with officials from the Scottish Football Association and safety officers from Edinburgh City Council as they created "a mock-up" of the redrawn pitch.

"What we put in place was a narrowed pitch of 64 metres," Cowan told Heartsfc.co.uk. "We took two metres off each side and added a metre at each end which would require us to remove the perimeter barrier as well as the first row of seats in the Gorgie and Roseburn stands. There would also be some implications for the style of football we could play.

"It is something that would have to be approved by UEFA, and while we believe we might get approval for the UEFA Cup, we don’t think we would for the Champions League where 105 metres would be required."

One potential sticking point is that extending the length of the pitch reduces the run-off area to a metre short of UEFA’s recommendation.

Hearts will now seek the approval of the SFA, who in turn will apply to UEFA to allow the club to stage European games at Tynecastle once more. If approval is granted, Hearts could begin work on the ground as early as May, should they qualify for next season’s UEFA Cup.

"What would be most appealing about the work that has been going on today is the fact, if successful, European football could return to Tynecastle," Cowan added.

In the 18-page document, Tynecastle Stadium Not Fit For Purpose, Robinson said it was "simply not possible" to create the minimum pitch size at the ground. This was a central tenet of his proposal to move the club from Gorgie, a plan which caused uproar amongst supporters.

Jim Clydesdale, the architect of Tynecastle’s three new stands, contradicted Robinson’s assertion last year at an egm. Clydesdale said altering the pitch was possible and came up with a plan broadly similar to the one Hearts now appear ready to adopt.