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Sympathy from Tynecastle was the last thing Celtic were entitled to expect as protests against Neil Lennon and the board of directors were serious enough to warrant police intervention. Since it is Hearts who will try to claim the Scottish Cup from Celtic’s grasp on Sunday.
Ann Budge, the club’s owner, recognised the dissent. As Craig Levein struggled in and ultimately lost his job as the Hearts manager in late 2019, Budge was in the eye of a similar storm. “In the same way as I didn’t approve of or agree with it when it happened to Craig, I really feel for Neil,” Budge explains. “I know the passion, I know how much football means but so much of what you see and hear is illogical. The team is having a bad run; it happens to more or less everybody. I just think it’s unpleasant and feel for those in the firing line because if only life was that simple. You can deal with it for so long then it begins to wear you down.”
To Budge’s detractors, admirable human emotion will serve only as a reminder of Hearts’ softness. The self-made multimillionaire, who stepped forward to save her club from the clutches of administration six years ago, knows all about brickbats. She can be self-deprecating about it all. “I’ve been criticised for spending money we didn’t have,” Budge says. “No, I didn’t do that; I spent money that I knew we had. Maybe we shouldn’t go into the discussion about whether I’ve always spent it wisely …”
If 2020 has proved fraught, Hearts took the concept to new levels. After Levein’s exit, the brief tenure of Daniel Stendel collided with ejection from Scotland’s top flight under controversial circumstances after an incomplete season. Budge took her battle against that punishment all the way to court but ultimately her club would start 2020-21 in the second tier.
“The one that just keeps jumping into my head is ‘horrendous’,” says Budge when asked for the word to describe her year. “I could say ‘rollercoaster’ or all the usual stuff but the fact is it has been never ending. For a long period before lockdown it was relentless, constantly battling something, one problem after another. Almost overnight it changed from being about Hearts to a much bigger issue. With Hearts I feel I can make decisions and implement them; they might be right, they might be wrong.”
From her conservatory – where isolation was at times very real – Budge instead found herself at odds with officialdom. Hearts’ owner remains sadly adamant Scottish football will emerge from Covid-19 as “considerably weaker”.
She adds: “There is no future for Scottish football if we just keep plugging on. I wanted to take this as a window of opportunity; stand back as business people and ask what we could do to improve. But barriers come up.”
Budge is reluctant to wade back through the inglorious detail of a Scottish Professional Football League vote and failed attempts at reconstruction. Which doesn’t mean such events don’t still sting. “There was a period of time where I was getting angrier and angrier,” Budge explains. “That’s not a place you want to be.
“None of us wants to spend our life getting up in the morning, feeling furious about everything. As the court case and the arbitration went on, I was getting more and more angry, partly because I knew what was coming. We all did. We knew how it would end but I was listening to certain things thinking: ‘This is so wrong.’ I was also exhausted.
“The thing that disillusioned me most – and people had said this for years – was the small mindedness that is so widespread in football. But even that is difficult because if you are a director of a company, your job is to look after the interests of that company. You could very well think: ‘This isn’t the right thing in the bigger picture but for my club …’
“Premiership chairmen asked why I was so calm. That’s the same people who essentially allowed it to happen. I don’t see it as my job to start being moralistic: ‘Surely you have to do the right thing.’ That isn’t up to me. I didn’t play the ‘You can’t let this happen to us’ card. It was very much on the basis of: ‘This is wrong, fundamentally wrong, and it’s unnecessary. Nobody needs to suffer in this way.’”
Suffer Hearts did, albeit in a football sense one step back may be advantageous. It would be one of many misconceptions, however, to suggest Budge doesn’t apportion any blame closer to home. She answers “absolutely” when it is pointed out Hearts, given standing and the fourth-largest wage bill in Scotland, should have been nowhere near the Premiership’s foot with eight fixtures still to play. Regrets? The Hearts owner has a few, including not ending Levein’s dugout spell after the 2019 Scottish Cup final. “That was a bad call on my part. It annoys me.
“It was only really when Craig left that I started to question everything by going up to the training ground and lifting the covers rather than sitting at a board meeting, talking about it. I saw there were management things you have to get right – communication, motivation – and wondered why on earth I left it so long to pure footballers. I could have done a lot more but I didn’t want to interfere.”
By next summer, Budge will have transferred her 75% shareholding to the Foundation of Hearts, thus creating the biggest supporter-owned club in the UK. “Someone else can do the firefighting,” she smiles.
Budge will still be in the background – most likely as executive chair and looking at long-term projects such as a new training ground – but has always been clear: fan-owned is not fan run. Budge says: “I am still in the situation where – even with everything that has been going on – I get calls from mainly American advisers saying: ‘We have investors who would like to get involved.’ It has been easy for me to say: ‘Sorry.’ Who is going to make that decision? In my world that is a board one.”
Budge’s net contribution to Hearts – six years without a salary, interest-free loans, attraction of benefactors who have handed over £12m already – is patently obvious despite the team’s league domain. Where results trump all, a cup win on Sunday would endorse the queen of Hearts’ legacy. “It would be absolutely amazing. I can’t put it into words, really. Supporters, players, board. Everybody would deserve it. It would be incredible; something good out of 2020.”
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