When Hearts players walk out and see half of Hampden bathed in maroon for the Scottish Cup semi final on Saturday they absolutely better get it.
Get what it means to represent Hearts. Understand that the DNA of the club demands you give everything you’ve got for the jersey. Because last weekend’s goalless draw at Motherwell was as far removed from everything that club stands for as I could ever have imagined.
Nobody escapes blame. Not Neil Critchley because the tactics were rubbish. Not the players because the performance was spineless. Not the board because this season should have been so much better.
It should never have come down to the last game to make the top six but it did and Hearts should have gone to Motherwell with machine guns blazing.
This is Heart of Midlothian. No disrespect to Motherwell but to stand off them and put in such a meak 90 minutes was utterly unacceptable.
Then I have to put up with endless screenshots of Tam McManus’ column in the Record lording it over Hearts with HIbs sitting third and calling me, Gary Locke and basically every Jambo on the planet out.
I’ll take my medicine on that one. I don’t take it very well. But I showed it to Lockey on Tuesday morning and he was absolutely seething. His reply? Something along the lines of ‘how many derbies did that wee (fill in the blank) win?”
Lockey is exactly what Hearts need on the park. He’d never accept such a substandard performance as what was produced at Fir Park.
He was manager when we got to the League Cup Final at Hampden in 2013. We lost the game to St Mirren. It was an awful feeling. But you know what? More than 20,000 Hearts fans gave us a standing ovation at the end because we absolutely emptied the tank for them.
We were a team full of kids like Dylan McGowan, Danny Wilson, Jamie Walker, Kevin McHattie and Michael Ngoo. The club was about to go into administration at the end of the Romanov years but we’d got to a final and went after St Mirren at Hampden.
It wasn’t quite enough but the fans recognised a team full of players that were ready to sweat blood for them. Give them that and the supporters will give you everything back.
Listen, I’ve said Critchley deserves time because he inherited a sh*tshow and I stand by that. He’s shown some positive signs and has generally spoken very well.
But he needs a statement win. Saturday was the first time I’ve been bitterly disappointed in his tactics and his words afterwards which basically said he never expected Motherwell to play the way they did.
Who cares about Motherwell? It’s not Celtic or Rangers. These games always have to be the Hearts way. This was a last chance to secure a top six spot. They should at least have gone out in a blaze of glory.
Hearts have rightly been accused of not winning a big game all season. Well they don’t come much bigger than a Hampden semi final against Aberdeen with 22,000 Hearts fans in the stands.
The very least those punters deserve is to see a side that’s ready to go to war and throw everything at the Dons. Fail to at least do that and they will deserve everything that comes at them. Every pivotal moment they’ve had this year, they've let themselves down. There has to be a realisation that it's not alright.
I go back to the board. They need people inside the club to make decisions that know the club. Don't just have Lockey as an ambassador - use him as a tool for people to understand what it means to represent Hearts.
So the season all comes down to Saturday. They need to reset and understand they are more than capable of beating this Aberdeen team.
They have drawn twice home and away and even the game they lost 3-2 at Pittodrie could easily have been a Hearts win. It’s time the players stood up and delivered. Do not have the fans questioning their desire, heart and endeavour in a semi final.
They need to show they have the balls to go out there, grab the game by the throat and do everything possible to get themselves into a final.
That would give them a chance to turn the narrative and end the season on a high. They have close to a full squad. They have more than enough ability in that group of players.
My fear is that they don’t have someone like Aberdeen captain Graeme Shinnie. He knows what standards are. He is a driving force in the heart of that Dons team.
Seeing him gong face to face with Barry Ferguson after Sunday’s draw at Pittodrie showed he was hurting. That’s your captain.
This should be a cracking game against two powerhouses of Scottish football that are both steeped in history.
I’ll be there in among the Jambos with my two boys. Again, all I ask is that the players who step on the pitch are ready to go to war for the people round about me. Do that and I’ll applaud them off the park no matter the result.
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