Darvel? Even my Glenafton side drew with them in our only meeting so far this season. If Jim Goodwin needed any pointers before heading down to deepest Ayrshire he only had to ask.
But in all seriousness, while Mick Kennedy’s team are the benchmark for our level and proved it on Monday, there’s no getting away from the fact that’s a shocker for Aberdeen. And the sticky situation Goodwin finds himself in this week has brought back pretty brutal memories from Hearts not so long ago.
Twenty two months to be precise when Robbie Neilson and Ann Budge came under attack from supporters convinced they were taking the club down a road to ruin. A Scottish Cup debacle at Brora Rangers was every bit as bad as Aberdeen’s Darvel disaster. Hearts then followed that defeat up with a home loss to Queen of the South in the Championship where there were protests before the game even started never mind afterwards.
It was pretty volatile and felt like the end for Robbie even though they were still top of the second tier. Looking back he did well to get through it and Ann Budge did even better to hold her nerve. But that defines a good club.
Look at Everton where they keep changing manager and get no further forward. Hibs to a lesser extent. Budge and Hearts stood firm and true to their beliefs. And boy have they been rewarded.
From being dumped out the Scottish Cup by a Highland League club to taking Rangers to extra time in the final of the same competition just one year later. A third place finish, European football, and they already look a certainty to finish third again and rake in more Euro Millions.
The last week, where Hearts have thumped Aberdeen 5-0 and Hibs 3-0 says it all. They are the third force in Scottish football by a fair stretch and now have to look for ways to keep climbing.
Complacency is their biggest enemy. They need to keep building, bringing in more faces to keep getting better and moving forward. It might be years away but they need to aim to get in between the Old Firm by cutting the gap every year.
The success of recruitment has been one of the major reasons for the rapid rise. And now the pursuit of Callum Paterson is really exciting. Even if they have to wait until the summer.
I’d absolutely love to see the big man come back and enjoy his best years in a successful Hearts side. Because, to be honest, his breakthrough at the club came in the harshest of climates.
Callum was part of a group of teenagers flung into the first team because of circumstances when the club was in all sorts of financial difficulties a decade ago. It’s crazy looking back now - there was Callum, Jamie Walker, Sam Nicholson, Jordan McGhee to name just a few - these boys were fighting for the club’s survival and they were only kids.
I remember having a team meeting early in the 2013-14 season, maybe September time. We had started the campaign on minus-15 points because we’d gone into administration but had managed to pull a bit of that back. We looked around the changing room at the young guys and it was a case of ‘this is what we’ve got, we just have to pull together and get out of this’.
The young guys were in to stay. Callum had played a good few times the previous season but he was still only 18 and being asked to try and help save the club.
Those lads went from the comfort of being upstairs in the Oriam where the youth teams were to joining us downstairs in the first team changing room and fighting for Hearts’ survival. At that meeting the young guys were told there were literally no excuses - they were in the first team changing room, they would be held accountable and expected to pull their weight.
It was sink or swim and Callum like the rest of them were excellent. They handled the pressure and excelled and, while we fell just short of staying up, those boys have all gone on to enjoy really good careers
Callum stayed to bring the club back up to the top flight before moving on to Cardiff and Sheffield Wednesday. He’s has gone on to play in the Premier League, for big clubs down south, for Scotland and he’s still in the prime of his career at 28.
That’s why I’d love to see him back, hopefully playing European football and getting to cup finals with Hearts. He could play for another five or six years easy because he is so athletic.
It would be a great signing and just another sign that everything at the club is heading in the right direction. Sunday’s win over Hibs just reinforces what I said after the last derby three weeks ago. The gap between the clubs is huge.
Even Robbie is getting a win at Easter Road now and that’s NEVER happened. To be fair I’m not sure it counts as he was banned. I wondered if he’d try to do a Mourinho and hide in a skip to get into the dressing room but no, he just sat in the stand. So this win belongs to Lee McCulloch and Gordon Forrest!
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