Heart of Midlothian Football Club, commonly known as Hearts, is a professional football club in Edinburgh, Scotland. The team competes in the , the top division of Scottish football. Hearts, the oldest football club in the Scottish capital, was formed in 1874, its name influenced by Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian (1818). The club crest is based on the Heart of Midlothian mosaic on the city's Royal Mile; the team's colours are maroon and white. Their local rivals are Hibernian, with whom they contest the Edinburgh derby. The club has been majority supporter-owned through Foundation of Hearts since 2021.
Hearts have played home matches at Tynecastle Park since 1886. After the ground was converted into an all-seater stadium in 1990, it now has a capacity of following the completion of a rebuilt main stand in 2017. They have training facilities at the Oriam, Scotland's national performance centre for sport, where they also run their youth academy.
Hearts have won the Scottish league championship four times, most recently in 1959–60, when they also retained the Scottish League Cup to complete a League and League Cup double – the only club outside of the Old Firm to achieve such a feat.
The club's most successful period was under former player turned manager Tommy Walker from the early 1950s to mid 1960s, during which they won two league titles and five major cups and finished inside the league's top four positions for 11 consecutive seasons. Jimmy Wardhaugh, Willie Bauld and Alfie Conn Sr., known as the Terrible Trio, were forwards at the start of this period with wing half linchpins Dave Mackay and John Cumming. Wardhaugh was part of another notable Hearts attacking trinity in the 1957–58 league winning side: along with Jimmy Murray and Alex Young, they set the record for the number of goals scored in a Scottish top-flight winning campaign (132) and also became the only side to finish a season in the Scottish top tier with a goal difference exceeding 100 (+103).
Hearts have won the Scottish Cup eight times, most recently in 2012 after a 5–1 victory over Hibernian. They have since been runners up in 2019, 2020 and 2022. All four of Hearts' Scottish League Cup triumphs came under Walker, most recently a 1–0 victory against Kilmarnock in 1962. Their most recent League Cup Final appearance was in 2013, where they lost 3–2 to St Mirren.
In 1958, Heart of Midlothian became the third Scottish and fifth British team to compete in European competition. The club reached the quarter-finals of the 1988–89 UEFA Cup, losing to Bayern Munich 2–1 on aggregate.
History
Early years The club was formed by a group of friends from the Heart of Midlothian Quadrille Assembly Club. The group of friends bought a ball before playing local rules football at the Tron from where they were directed by a local policeman to The Meadows to play. Local rules football was a mix of rugby and association football. In December 1873 a match was held between XIs selected by Mr Thomson from Queen's Park and Mr Gardner from Clydesdale at Raimes Park in Bonnington. This was the first time that association rules had been seen in Edinburgh. Members from the dance club viewed the match and in 1874 decided to adopt the Association rules. The new side was Heart of Mid-Lothian Football Club. The exact date of the club's formation was never recorded; however, 1874 is regarded as the year of formation as it was when association rules were taken on, although Tom Purdie claimed the club was formed in 1873. The earliest mention of "Heart of Midlothian" in a sporting context is a report in The Scotsman newspaper from 20 July 1864 of The Scotsman vs Heart of Mid-Lothian at cricket. It is not known if this was the same club who went on to form the football club, but it was common for football clubs in those days to play other sports as well.
The club took its name from historic county Midlothian, dating from the Middle Ages, as well as the 1860 Heart of Midlothian mosaic on the Royal Mile, which marks the historic entrance to the Old Tolbooth jail; the jail was demolished in 1817 but was kept fresh in the mind by Walter Scott's 1818 novel The Heart of Midlothian.
Led by captain Tom Purdie the club played its matches in the East Meadows and in 1875 Hearts became members of the Scottish Football Association (SFA) and were founder members of the Edinburgh Football Association. By becoming members of the SFA Hearts were able to play in the Scottish Cup for the first time. Hearts played against 3rd Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers F.C. in October 1875 at Craigmount Park in Edinburgh. The game ended in a scoreless draw. A replay was held at the Meadows which again finished 0–0. Under rules at the time both clubs progressed to the next round with Hearts losing out to Drumpellier in the next round.
In the 1884–85 season, clubs in Scotland struggled to attract quality players who preferred to play professionally in England. After an 11–1 win in the Scottish Cup over Dunfermline a protest was raised against the club for fielding two professional players, which was against the rules at the time. Hearts were suspended by the SFA for two years - the first ever suspension of an SFA club. They were readmitted after a change of the club's committee.
Early success Hearts had considerable success in the early years of the Scottish Football League, winning the league championship in 1895 and 1896. They also won four Scottish Cups in a 15-year period from 1891 to 1906. The team played against Sunderland in the 1894–95 World Championship, but lost with a 5–3 score. Hearts did win the World Championship title in 1902, beating Tottenham Hotspur 3–1 in Tynecastle Park, after a 0–0 in London a few months earlier.
Hearts in World War I
In November 1914, Heart of Midlothian comfortably led the First Division, having started the 1914–15 season with eight straight victories, including a 2–0 defeat of reigning champions Celtic.
This streak coincided with the beginning of World War I and the start of a public debate upon the morality of continuing professional football while young soldiers were dying on the front-line. A motion was placed before the Scottish Football Association to postpone the season, with one of its backers, Airdrieonians chairman Thomas Forsyth declaring that "playing football while our men are fighting is repugnant".McCrae's Battalion, 15 While this motion was defeated at the ballot box, with the SFA opting to wait for War Office advice, the East London philanthropist Frederick Nicholas Charrington was orchestrating a public campaign to have professional football in Britain suspended, and achieving great popular support for his cause.McCrae's Battalion, 21–24 The prime tactic of Charrington's campaign was to shame football players and officials into action through public and private denouncement. In response, sixteen players from Hearts enlisted in Sir George McCrae's new volunteer battalion, joining en masse on 25 November 1914. The battalion was to become the 16th Royal Scots and was the first to earn the "footballer's battalion" sobriquet. The group of volunteers also contained some 500 Hearts supporters and ticket-holders, 150 followers of Hibernian and a number of professional footballers from Raith Rovers, Falkirk and Dunfermline.
Military training was thus added to the Hearts players football training regime, and the side had a 20-game unbeaten run between October and February. However, exhaustion from their army exertions, twice including 10-hour nocturnal-marches the night before a league game,McCrae's Battalion, 95–99 eventually led to a drop in form, as several enlisted players missed key games. Defeats to St Mirren and Morton allowed Celtic to usurp the Maroons and eventually claim the league title by 4 points.
The war claimed the lives of seven first team players: Duncan Currie, John Allan, James Boyd, Tom Gracie, Ernest Ellis, James Speedie and Harry Wattie as well as former player David Philip.
There are two war memorials to mark this period; The McCrae's Battalion Great War Memorial in Contalmaison and the Heart of Midlothian War Memorial in Haymarket, Edinburgh donated to the city by the club in 1922. The latter was placed in storage due to the Edinburgh Trams work but has now been replaced a little to the east of its previous position. A further memorial commemorating the 1914 Hearts team has been proposed by the club. An annual pilgrimage is held by football supporters to Contalmaison every year, whilst Hearts hold their memorial services at Haymarket or, whilst it was in storage, at Tynecastle Park.
Inter war years Hearts collected no senior silverware in the inter war years. Tommy Walker joined the Hearts ground staff aged 16 in February 1932. As Scottish clubs could not then officially sign players until the age of 17, Walker played junior football for Linlithgow Rose until his birthday in May.Speed et al., P78 A talented and elegant inside-forward, Walker quickly earned a place in the Hearts first team, helping the side to victory in the 1933 Jubilee edition of the Rosebery Charity Cup, in a season in which they finished 3rd in the league. He was a regular first team player by 1933–34 but despite some emphatic victories, inconsistent form limited Hearts to a sixth-place finish.
Despite Walker scoring 192 league goals for Hearts and playing in sides boasting numerous internationals, such as Scots Dave McCulloch, Barney Battles, Andy Anderson and Alex Massie, Welshman Freddie Warren and Irishman Willie Reid, Walker was destined not to win a major honour as a player at Tynecastle. The closest Hearts came to success during his period there was a second place league finish in 1937–38.
Tommy Walker's managerial era The first seeds of the Tommy Walker managerial success at Hearts were sown by Davie McLean. On 9 October 1948 after a mediocre start to the 1948–49 season, Hearts' manager McLean gave a competitive first team debut to 20 year old centre forward Willie Bauld and 19 year old inside left Jimmy Wardhaugh, and 22 year old inside right Alfie Conn Sr. had already broken through to the first team so this game marked the first time all three were deployed as a combined attacking force. They became dubbed the Terrible Trio and scored over 900 Hearts goals between them (Wardhaugh 376, Bauld 355, Conn 221). As a unit they played 242 games together. The combination of Wardhaugh's dribbling skills and non-stop running, Bauld's cerebral play and prodigious aerial ability, and Conn's energetic, tenacious style and powerful shooting complemented each other well.Scott, The Terrible Trio, 101–103 Their first match as a forward combination ended in a 6–1 defeat of Scot Symon's East Fife team of the era.Hearts History 1944 – 54 www.heartsfc.co.uk This was notable as Symon's team had defeated the Maroons 4–0 three weeks earlier.
A few weeks later in December 1948 Tommy Walker left during his third season at Chelsea to return to Hearts. He took the role of player-assistant to manager McLean. McLean's intention was that Walker would be a steadying influence in a developing young team. However, after a single appearance at right-half in a 1–0 home defeat by Dundee, Walker retired to concentrate fully on learning the managerial ropes.Price, P10 Tangible progress was made in the League Championship in 1949–50 when Hearts finished third. As Tommy Walker had become more influential, McLean was co-opted to the Board on 16 March 1950.