The highest scoring competitive match in the Edinburgh Derby finished Hibernian 5 – 6 Hearts on New Year’s Day in 1940, but that was the least remarkable aspect to the match.
Despite 14,000 being at Easter Road, nobody knew what was going on during the match due to very thick fog.
The match only went ahead because, as the match was scheduled to be broadcast to soldiers abroad, the War Office feared the German Luftwaffe would be alerted to bad weather over Leith, an important war-time target, if the match was postponed.
The result was broadcaster Bob Kingsley making up the action that unfolded, which he continued 15 minutes after the match had ended because he did not know the full-time whistle had blown. The bizarre nature of the match led football historian Bob Crampsey to describe the game as “Fawlty Towers ahead of itself” in the Scotsman years later.
This is just one part of the storied history of the Edinburgh Derby, which is one of the oldest and longest running derbies in the history of world football.
“It is all about the bragging rights. It’s the first fixture you look out for every season,” said Garry Halliday, Director of Member Affairs at the Foundation of Hearts.
The derby has strong roots in the working-class background of the city, and the geographical divide between the two clubs enhances this.
Dr John Kelly, lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at the University of Edinburgh, detailed that “It is a ‘one city’ derby rooted in contested notions of being the authentic Edinburgh club. These contested notions of Edinburgh place Leith (Hibs) and Gorgie (Hearts) at the heart of the respective geographical imaginations.
So there’s a dual geographical pride for both clubs with Leith-Edinburgh and Gorgie-Edinburgh being represented in respective imagined communities of the city.”
Kelly says these differences extend to how both clubs perceive themselves historically and culturally.
“Hearts retain a pride in its Britishness and its connections to McCrae’s Battalion from WW1. But the main influences today tend to revolve around Hearts fans having notions of being the ‘establishment’ club and showing itself to be the bigger club, and Hibs fans clinging to notions of being the progressive and ‘cooler’ club which is not afraid to innovate – they were Scotland’s first top club to put a sponsor on the top and they signed George Best.”
The derby has gone through several periods where each side has dominated for a short period: the post-war period was a golden-age for Hibs which included three title wins and a 7-0 Hibs win at Hearts on the annual New Year’s Day fixture in 1973.
Kelly though believes that the period in the 90s was “perhaps the most significant period” in the derby’s history, when Hearts Chairman Wallace Mercer attempted (and failed) to buy Hibs and merge with Hearts, which “re-energised and shifted the focus of the derby to a good degree.”
The first match after the failed takeover attempt at Easter Road on the 15th of September 1990 was marred by crowd-trouble (50 fans were arrested and 17 taken to hospital), with the police advising the Hearts’ dressing room at half-time not to score again to prevent further crowd trouble after racing into a 3-0 lead.
Mercer did not attend the game because he required a security presence at his home.
That was part of a 22-game unbeaten run Hearts had in the derby which spanned 5 years between 1989 and 1994.
Halliday also said that the Hearts administration “still resonates” today: In 2013 Hearts became unable to pay £25 million in debts to parent companies owned by majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov, which led to the entire first-team being put up for sale.
Despite this, it led to Hearts becoming the largest fan-owned club in the UK, which Halliday says gives the derby “an extra edge as well. It means that if we do well, we’re doing things the right way.”
That isn’t the only way in which Hearts and Hibs fans feel they do the derby in the right way.
A developing facet of the derby is how both fans attempt to differentiate themselves from the sectarian hostility of the Old-Firm.
“Celtic-Rangers is a different ball game altogether. A big part of their club cultures are built on the religious divide, and that probably helps to why they’re so big. There’s a very small minority at each club [Hibs and Hearts], but it really doesn’t come into play at all. Us fans are happy that it doesn’t. That’s not really what we’re all about,” said Halliday.
It is only in the last decades that Hibs and Hearts fans have really tried to differentiate the Edinburgh derby from the Old Firm, which has resulted in Hibs and Hearts fans feeling greater pride in their own derby
Kelly said that an increasing division between “sectarian vs non-sectarian” fans “has seen Hearts and Hibs fans distance themselves from their Glasgow counterparts in seeking to appear to be non-sectarian with locally authentic fans rooted in Edinburgh (as opposed to Rangers and Celtic and their international fan base). These tensions really place Edinburgh as central to both clubs’ imagined identities.”
“Easter Road – Hibernian v Kilmarnock 2012” by Daniel from United Kingdom is licensed under CC BY 2.0.