There are two senior football teams in Edinburgh: the splendidly named Heart of Midlothian, aka Hearts, and Hibernian, aka Hibs. Hibernian plays in the Scottish Premiership League while their city rivals currently play in the lower Scottish Championship League.
Like most cities across the world where two football teams play, fan rivalries in Edinburgh are robust, fierce and extremely partisan. So it’s just as well that this blog is for visitors to Edinburgh who don’t care about these rivalries because the obvious problem about a post about rival football teams is that it doesn’t matter what team to start!
Like most countries, football is played at many levels, not just at professional level but we need to start with one of the two professional teams, so first up, Hearts. Of course, I am biased. I’m an Edinburgh lad and have supported Hearts since I was a boy.
Heart Of Midlothian Football Club
Name
Like quite a few Scottish football clubs that still play today, Hearts started in Victorian times, being formed in 1874. Despite being in the lower league this year, it’s one of Scotland’s premier football clubs.
The club was founded by a group of friends who played football together at the Meadows, the great park on the south side of the old town (if you have a ball, you can still play football yourself there and many locals do, especially on a Sunday).
The club’s name, Heart of Midlothian, is derived from the famous novel written by the great Scottish poet and writer, Sir Walter Scott The Heart of Mid-Lothian. The main part of the story concerns activity at the Tolbooth, the notorious prison in the centre – the heart – of Edinburgh. It stood, until 1817, right next to St Giles’ Cathedral.
If you visit the Cathedral today and look down at the ground, you will see a coloured heart, made up of the cobble stones of the road. It’s called the Heart of Midlothian (rather than Edinburgh) because Edinburgh was once in the county of Midlothian.
But lovely as the story is, the club probably wasn’t named after Scott’s novel , at least not directly. It’s more likely that it was named after the players’ dance club, the Heart of Mid-Lothian Quadrille Assembly. Whether the dance hall itself was named after the book or simply named after the heart in the road, which was nearby, isn’t really known.
The first captain was Tom Purdie, who played 61 times for the club.
Ground
The young team played many of its first matches at the Meadows until managing to secure a pitch at Powburn, which was owned by the Edinburgh FA. This allowed them to charge admission and in 1879 moved to a ground at Powderhall. But Powderhall was their home for only two years for in 1881 they moved to Gorgie, which became their spiritual home.
The ground they moved to was not the present ground but to a pair of pitches on the south side of Gorgie Road, where Wardlaw Street and Wardlaw Place now stand.
Five years later, the club moved across Gorgie Road to Tynecastle Park, where they still play today. The old ground is now a modern seated stadium but is still sandwiched into the community, surrounded by tenements and the old Tynecastle Secondary School, where generations of schoolboys (including your author) would watch their heroes train through the school windows.
Gorgie is a district in the west of Edinburgh, around 2 miles (3.2km) from the city centre.
Colours
Hearts colours are a deep red called maroon with a white trim, although their very first colours way back in 1874 were actually all white.
Football Honours
- Scottish Cup Winners: 8 times (most recent 2012)
- League Championship Winners: 4 times (most recent 1960)
- League Cup Winners: 4 times (most recent 1963)
- Best European Result: UEFA Cup Quarter Final, 1988, against German club, Bayern Munich
Hibernian Football Club
Name
Founded in 1875, the year after Hearts, Hibs are also one of Scotland’s premier football clubs.
Although Hibs and Hearts now play in opposite sides of the city, both were started by players living in or near the Royal Mile. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Scotland was the destination of many poor Irish immigrants.
Many made new lives in Glasgow but substantial numbers made their way across Scotland to settle in Edinburgh, in an area of the Cowgate that was once called Little Ireland or Little Dublin, and it was from this Irish diaspora that Hibernian was founded.
The Catholic church that was built in the Cowgate to provide a place of worship was called St Patrick’s and opened in 1865 and is still there today. Around 1870, following the creation of the Catholic Young Men’s Society around five years earlier, two men were to meet who became the drivers of the formation of the club.
Father Edward Hannan was a priest who was born in Limerick and had travelled to Scotland as part of his studies, was persuaded to stay in Edinburgh and administer to the people of Little Ireland.
Michael Whelahan was only 10 when his family were forced to leave Ireland and settled in Edinburgh and he met Father Hannan after joining the Society.
Like the young men who started Hearts, the young men from Little Ireland would play football at the Meadows, but found they couldn’t join any established football teams because of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudices at the time.
So it was Michael who suggested to Father Hannan that they start their own club. They called their new football club Hibernians after Hibernia, the Latin for Ireland. The ’s’ in the name was dropped after the club was re-formed in 1892 and was called simply Hibernian.
Father Hannan became its first manager and Michael Whelehan its first captain.
Ground
The new club would play most of their matches at the Meadows until 1880 when they opened a new ground near the present ground at Easter Road and called it Hibernian Park. Unfortunately, the lease on the ground expired in 1890 and could not be renewed. Hibs were homeless.
The constant travelling and the lack of a home almost drove the club to extinction and in 1892 it had to be reformed. At the end of that year, the club took a new lease out on a field, quite close to the old Hibernian Park, called Drum Park.
As a football pitch it wasn’t ideal. Access was difficult (at the time) and worse, the field had a slope. But it became home and by the following year a grandstand had been built. Hibs were home and Drum Park, the field with the slope is now Easter Road Stadium. It still has a slope though!
Easter Road is a main thoroughfare in the east of Edinburgh, and the ground is around 2 miles (3.2km) from the city centre.
Colours
It’s no surprise that Hibs play in the Irish green, with white contrast. Originally a full green top with white shorts, with the now familiar green top with full white sleeves first appearing in1938. Nowadays, as with most football strips, the club plays with short sleeves.
Football Honours
- Scottish Cup Winners: 3 times (most recent 2016)
- League Championship Winners: 4 times (most recent 1952)
- League Cup Winners: 3 times (most recent 2007)
- Best European Results: European Cup Semi-Final, 1956, against French club, Reims; Inter-Cities Fairs Cup Semi-Final, 1961, against Italian club, Roma
Edinburgh City Football Club
Edinburgh City plays in Division 2 of the Scottish League, the lowest tier of the Scottish Football League. The club was originally formed in 1928 as an amateur club but went out of business in the 1950s.
The present club started out as Postal United and were granted permission to use the Edinburgh City name in 1986 and were accepted into the Scottish Football League in 2016.
The club plays at Ainslie Park, in the north of the city as their ground at Meadowbank is being redeveloped by the Council and is scheduled to reopen in mid 2021.
The Spartans Football Club
Spartans were founded in 1951 by ex-players of Edinburgh University. Their ground is at Ainslie Park in the north of Edinburgh (which they currently share temporarily with Edinburgh City as City’s own ground at Meadowbank is redeveloped).
Spartans play in the Lowland League, the fifth tier of the Scottish Football League along with the Highland League. The winners of both leagues play each other with the winner of that match playing the bottom team of Division 2 of the Scottish League. Winning the match will promote the team to the professional league.