I watched Hearts vs Rangers: Fans crowning new Gorgie ‘Judas’ spotted and ace makes one thing abundantly clear
Some football matches are about tactics and some are about points, but every so often one comes along that is really about feelings. Hearts against Rangers at Tynecastle on Wednesday night was one of those. On the pitch it was a lively, end-to-end 2-2 draw between the second and third-placed teams in the Premiership. Off it, it was a loud, angry, theatrical evening in which a stadium full of supporters told three men who used to belong to them exactly how they felt about their departure. By the end, the scoreline was almost secondary to the atmosphere, and anyone who was there will remember the noise far longer than the result.
The build-up was always going to be intense. A loud home support greeted their former manager, and the arrival of Lawrence Shankland and Cammy Devlin with the away team prompted ferocious booing. Derek McInnes, Shankland and Devlin had all left Hearts in the summer, and all three had joined Rangers, which meant that a club that had spent a year dreaming of a first title in decades saw its manager, its captain and one of its engine-room midfielders leave for a bigger rival. That kind of exodus leaves a mark. Supporters can forgive a player for leaving when the circumstances are clear, but three departures to the same destination in the same window is a different matter, and Tynecastle was not in a forgiving mood.
The clearest expression of that anger arrived before the game had even started. As the teams walked out, a Judas banner was unfurled that was aimed squarely at Shankland. The Hearts Standard noted the same thing, reporting a Judas flag aimed at the striker and adding that three supporters had dressed up as rats around the ground. It is the kind of imagery that football crowds have used for generations, and it is deliberately harsh. There is no subtlety in calling a player a traitor, and the rat costumes added a touch of pantomime that took the edge off the menace while leaving the message perfectly clear. Hearts fans wanted Shankland to know exactly how they saw his move.
It is worth being fair to Shankland here, because the Judas label is a heavy one, and it says as much about the supporters as it does about the player. He is a lifelong Rangers fan who spent years at Hearts and scored a huge number of goals for the club, and he was always going to be tempted by a move to the team he supported as a boy. Most neutral observers would say that he did nothing dishonourable by taking that opportunity, particularly given that Rangers are a bigger club with greater resources. But football does not run on neutral observation. It runs on loyalty, and the fans who sang his name for years feel as though that loyalty has been thrown back in their faces.
That sense of betrayal has an extra edge because of what happened last season. Hearts came agonisingly close to winning the league, led the table for most of the campaign and then lost it on the final day to Celtic, and the pain of that collapse has not faded. The club’s response was to rebuild, with a new head coach in Wouter Vrancken and a squad that has been reshaped in the image of his attacking, high-tempo football. But the departure of McInnes, Shankland and Devlin so soon after the heartbreak felt, to many supporters, like salt in a fresh wound. Wednesday night was the first chance they had to express that frustration in person, and they did so with enthusiasm.
The noise itself was remarkable. The Edinburgh News writer who covered the game described the atmosphere as one in which few things compare to a scorned football fan, and recalled that the Hearts Song, performed by Colin Chisholm in the last meeting at Tynecastle, was among the loudest things he had ever heard in a stadium. That gives a sense of the scale. Tynecastle is a compact ground, with the stands close to the pitch and the roof trapping every sound, and when a crowd of that size is angry, the effect can be genuinely overwhelming. It is no exaggeration to say that the home support became a twelfth man, and in the early stages it looked like it might drive the visitors into the ground.
Instead, Rangers did something unexpected. Kevin Kelsy opened the scoring for the visitors, and the manner of the goal made it sting more for the home side. A slack touch from a Hearts defender presented Kelsy with possession, and he exchanged passes with Ryan Naderi inside the box before slipping a composed finish past goalkeeper Beau Reus. It was a cheap goal, the sort that a team under pressure can ill afford to give away, and it instantly changed the atmosphere. The roar that had greeted the teams was replaced by a stunned murmur, and the small group of Rangers supporters in the away end celebrated wildly. For a few minutes, it looked as though McInnes was about to enjoy exactly the kind of comeback story he would have dreamed of.
That is the moment that makes the night so interesting, because the early goal could easily have broken Hearts. A team that is tired, carrying injuries and playing in a hostile-but-nervous atmosphere might have crumbled. The home side had been the better team in the first half and found themselves behind through their own mistake, which is the most deflating way to go in front at the break. The Hearts Standard noted that the team had made Rangers look ordinary for large periods despite missing a raft of players, and that is a strong endorsement of how well they played. To keep that standard while a goal down, with a crowd baying for a response, takes real character.
What followed was the passage of play that told you the most about both sides. Claudio Braga’s leveller after half-time cranked the temperature up once more, and Calvin Miller then had Gorgie sweltering with Hearts’ second after a spell of pressure that flummoxed the opposition. The Rangers Review described the visitors’ start to the second half as lethargic, which led to two goals in quick succession, and that is a fair assessment. Hearts came out with energy and purpose, and Rangers looked a step behind. Braga’s equaliser was well taken and Miller’s finish at the far post was clinical, and between them they turned the game upside down in a matter of minutes.
There is a subplot attached to Miller’s goal that adds another layer to the story. McInnes worked hard to sign Miller while he was still Hearts manager late last season, and the forward almost finished the night as the hero against him. In other words, the man who scored the goal that put Hearts ahead was a player McInnes himself had wanted to bring to Tynecastle, which is the sort of irony that football loves. It also says something about the way Hearts have operated in the transfer market. They have invested in recruitment, and the new signings are making an impact, which means the club has not been left helpless by the departures of its former leaders.
This is the part of the evening that the headline’s talk of one thing being abundantly clear really captures. The Hearts fans made their feelings clear with the banners and the booing, but the players made theirs clear on the pitch. The Edinburgh News argued that the team had shown it can roll with the many punches being thrown at it, even when tired and bruised. That is a significant statement, because Hearts are living through a gruelling schedule, with European football alongside the league, and they have been hit by a string of injuries. They lost Rogers Mato to injury around the half-hour mark, adding to the list of absentees. Despite all of that, they took a 2-1 lead against a Rangers side that had been winning almost every week.
The wider context makes that performance even more impressive. Rangers spent upwards of £35 million last season and have spent more than £25 million this season, which puts them on a completely different financial level to Hearts. And yet, Hearts have held their own. They have won four of the last five meetings between the sides, and they have shown that a well-organised team with a clear philosophy can compete with a richer opponent. The Scotsman noted that Hearts are now 551 days without defeat at Tynecastle in the Premiership, a run that has seen Celtic, Rangers, Benfica and Sturm Graz all stumble in Gorgie. That is an extraordinary record, and it explains why the home supporters were so confident at 2-1.
It also helps explain why the late equaliser stung so much. Olwethu Makhanya’s header in the eighty-ninth minute stopped Hearts from closing the four-point gap between the sides. The goal came from a free-kick delivered by Badredine Bouanani, who had come on in the second half, and it arrived at a time when Hearts looked to be tiring. Rangers had been under pressure for a long time, but they found a way to hang on, and a corner-style delivery from a set-piece was all it took. For Hearts, it was a reminder that a lead is never safe until the final whistle, and that a tired team is vulnerable to exactly this sort of moment.
The Scotsman’s writer felt that Hearts needed to be smarter, pointing out that they carried attacking threat all evening under Vrancken but had to take care in the midst of a gruelling schedule. That is a reasonable point. Vrancken’s side plays with enthusiasm and abandon, and it makes them thrilling to watch, but it can leave them open at the back. A team that pushes numbers forward to chase a third goal can be punished by a quick counter or a set-piece, and Rangers took advantage of that. The balance between attack and defence is something the head coach will be working on, particularly given how many injuries he is dealing with.
Still, the draw should not be seen as a failure for Hearts. Quite the opposite, in many ways. They fought back from behind, dominated long periods of the game and showed the sort of resilience that title challengers need. The result extends their unbeaten run at home and keeps them in a strong position in the table, just four points behind Rangers. In the context of everything that has happened over the past few months, including the loss of key personnel and the pain of last season, it is a mark of how well the squad has pulled together.
For Rangers, the point was equally valuable, though for different reasons. McInnes has been quick to build a strong run of results, and his team showed togetherness to rescue a draw on a night when they were outplayed. That kind of grit is often the difference between a team that wins a title and one that falls just short, and the Scotsman noted that there was more belief and fortitude about this Rangers side than there has been in recent years. That is a positive sign for the club, and it suggests that McInnes has quickly instilled the kind of mentality that Rangers supporters have been craving.
The final whistle brought one more moment of drama. There was almost a flare-up when McInnes’s handshake riled Hearts manager Wouter Vrancken, which was a fitting end to an evening that had been simmering with tension from the start. Handshakes after games are usually forgettable, but when emotions are running this high, even the smallest gesture can be misinterpreted. It showed that the rivalry between the two clubs is genuine, and that the new relationship between McInnes and his former employers will take some time to settle. For the neutral, it added a final bit of spice to a game that did not need much more.
Looking at the bigger picture, the night was a perfect illustration of why Scottish football remains so compelling. A game that could have been just another midweek league fixture became a tapestry of emotion, with a pantomime villain, a banner, three rats, a crowd on fire and a late goal to keep the score level. The fans who turned up were not simply watching a match, they were taking part in a drama, and they played their roles with gusto. It is exactly this sort of occasion that makes the league worth following, and it is a reminder that football, at its best, is about people and their passions.
The longer-term question is what it all means for the title race. Rangers and Hearts are both firmly in the mix, and a four-point gap is nothing in the context of a long season. Hearts have home advantage in every sense, and their record at Tynecastle is superb, but they have to prove they can win consistently on the road as well. Rangers, meanwhile, have the resources and the momentum, but they need to show that they can handle the physical and emotional demands of a challenging fixture list. If both sides maintain their current standards, the race could go all the way to the final day again.
In the end, the clearest lesson from the night is that the resentment among Hearts supporters runs deep and is not going to fade quickly. The Edinburgh News put it simply, saying that the fans made abundantly clear their feelings on the summer exits and that it is fair to say the bitterness still lingers. That will probably be true the next time the teams meet, and the time after that, as long as McInnes, Shankland and Devlin remain in light blue. Football supporters have long memories, and the sense of betrayal will not disappear just because a game has finished level.
For the three men at the centre of it all, that is simply part of the job. They knew the reception they would get, and they will know it again. What matters to them now is what they do on the pitch, and whether they can help Rangers win the league. If they do, the boos will fade into the background, and the history books will remember the trophy and not the banners. But for one night at least, in the heat and noise of Gorgie, the old loyalties and the new ones collided in the loudest possible way, and it was glorious to watch
