Meet the Hearts fan returning to Dens Park for first time since May 1986 - 'there was a clock'

On 3 May 1986, it ticked down towards oblivion for one set of supporters. The clock isn’t there any longer, as Searl will discover on Sunday when he makes his first visit to the stadium since a certain fateful afternoon.

Out of the 4,000 or so Hearts fans making the trip this weekend, when the league leaders take on Dundee, there might be few hundred who were present among an estimated 12,000 away throng at the same ground (nearly) 40 years ago.

There will be a large proportion in attendance who were not born then, of course. Many Hearts supporters, meanwhile, will have vowed never to return, citing an understandable preference to avoid such a potentially triggering venue. Others might have since stuck a tentative toe back in the waters, reasoning that while the ground will always be associated with the darkest of dark days, it is much changed now. It has also hosted some more enjoyable occasions, including Hearts’ last outing there - a 6-0 win in February. So some of those shuffling in through the turnstiles will have already reached an uneasy accommodation with the place.

But will there be anyone else in the away sections on Sunday making a first visit to Dens Park since Hearts saw the title slip agonisingly from their grasp in the final seven minutes of the season?

Searl is braced for an emotional maelstrom. The obvious question is why now? Weeks away from retiring from his role as a product development manager with Hampden Bank, it seems an unnecessary return to a place of such significant anguish. He should be riding off into the sunset, not checking the timetable for scheduled trains to Dundee to confront some demons.

He blames his son, Aaron, who happens to be a neighbour of mine. Having bumped into him last week, Aaron casually mentioned that he had bought two tickets for the upcoming Dundee match. Nothing so unusual about that, of course. Although it’s being shown on live TV, any Hearts fan worth their salt will be there.

“Oh,” he added. “My dad is coming with me. He’s not been back to Dens since ’86.” My ears pricked up. Really?

Masterpiece of Jambo memorabilia

Fast forward a few days to Thursday. Searl Snr cuts an immediate dash when he arrives at our appointed meeting place for a spot of lunch. He is wearing the very same scarf worn that afternoon. It is a pristine, vintage piece of cloth that does not include any of Hearts' League Cup wins among the honours stitched into it. It’s clearly a discerning item: Only Scottish Cups and League titles. Let’s just stick to the big ones, shall we?

It’s a masterpiece of Jambo memorabilia in immaculate condition and is difficult to stop pawing. “Obviously a design choice to omit the League Cup wins, as we won in 1954 and indeed more times before the scarf was printed,” he says. He thinks it dates to the early 1960s, perhaps before the last of the club’s four League Cup wins in 1962. “Probably bought from a now closed sports shop in Edinburgh such as MacKenzies, which was beside what is now the Festival Theatre,” he reckons. His first game was against Falkirk in April 1962 – despite it being a rich time in the club’s history, Hearts lost 3-2. He was there when they suffered a last day 2-0 reversal to Kilmarnock three years later. It meant the Scottish title heading to Rugby Park rather than Tynecastle, on goal average.

Which brings us to Dens. In a way, the explanation for why he’s returning now seems quite straightforward. Aaron got him a ticket. He didn’t want to let him down. “Back in '86, we just went,” he shrugs. Remarkably, on the morning of the match, The Courier reported that tickets were still available for “Scotland’s match-of-the day”. The article added: “Regardless of whether or not they are snapped up, Dens Park will house its biggest crowd of the season”.

Attending away games now is more of a bind. It’s often about loyalty points accumulation for a start. Although a very fit looking 72, Searl has two new hips. Away games can be a mission and Dens wasn't likely to feature top of any list.

“Others I am sure have made more of an effort,” he says. “I just couldn’t face returning. There will be a number there on Sunday who were there in ’86, but probably not many who have not returned since! If we can get the win, it will be a A) a relief. And B)…..not closure, exactly, because it can never be that, but just the feeling of being there and we have actually won.” Would he take a draw? “No,” he says. “I think we have to win.”

A draw would have done the trick 40 years ago when Searl got into a car with three teammates from Royal High amateur football team and headed 60 miles north.

It seems significant that Hearts are, once again, top of the league. It is not, though, quite such high stakes. The points difference is three to current nearest challengers Rangers. The goal difference advantage is a healthy seven. If it were the last day, they could probably afford to lose, although that’s been said before, including by Archie Knox, the then Dundee manager, in 1986.

I remember just looking at the clock...

The Dens Park side needed a win to keep alive hopes of qualifying for Europe. “The fact is Hearts could lose to us and still win the league and I think that’s what’s going to happen,” he told The Courier on the morning of the match. Celtic had to win by three clear goals at St Mirren to stand a chance of overhauling Hearts. Plenty had radios pinned to their ears. However, Searl’s attention was fixed on something else.

“There was a clock,” he says. “If I am looking at the game, it was up to my left. That’s where we were standing.” Those with a knowledge of Dens will know that this places him in the enclosure in front of the main stand. Hearts fans were packed just as tightly in this area as behind the goal at the old TC Keay end of the ground, which will be familiar from all those photographs of the day’s two main pinch points. A brace from Albert Kidd scored against a backdrop of a sea of stunned faces.

“When we beat Dundee United 3-0 at Tannadice, I really thought that day, ‘We can do this now’,” says Searl of the run-in. “Home to Aberdeen, drew 1-1. Home to Clydebank, we only won 1-0. If we had beaten them 4 or 5-0…I remember playing (for Royal High) at Kingsknowe, we came off the pitch. 'What was the score?!' If Celtic had drawn or lost it would have been all over, but we wanted to be there!” They were happy it had gone to the final day after hearing Celtic had won 2-0, against Dundee coincidentally.

“And so up we go,” he says, “I remember just looking at the clock. Ten minutes left… Just ten minutes…hold on, hold on. And then seven to go, 83 minutes….”

Even now, when it gets to the 83rd minute of games, Searl says he tenses up. “When the clock hits 84, right, good….” He can relax again.

He doesn’t remember being aware of Kidd prior to the game. Walter, the Hearts skipper, yes. But not Albert. “We certainly didn’t have him down as a threat,” he says. Neither did Knox, necessarily. Kidd hadn’t scored a goal all season and hadn’t featured since February. But the confident little forward begged the manager to put him on the bench at least, reasoning that he always fancied himself to do well against Hearts. After replacing Tosh McKinlay, he was in the right place at the right time to sweep in John Brown’s header down following Robert Connor’s corner. There were just seven minutes left. Celtic were already five up in Paisley.

“I remember looking at the clock and then the face of one of the guys I was with,” says Searl. “He was just white. There are no words. Billy MacKay comes on for Iain Jardine, 85 minutes. You kind of know this isn’t going to help. We are already 1-0 down. Kidd scores a second and the game plays out.”

Shankland would struggle to get in team of ‘86

The entire campaign played out as everyone expected given Hearts were reeling from such a body blow. Lifting themselves for the following weekend’s Scottish Cup final against Aberdeen was an impossibility.

Alex Ferguson knew that. The Aberdeen players knew that. Alex MacDonald, the Hearts manager, probably knew that. Searl certainly felt that way. “I was working at TSB at the time, we had a conference on the Saturday in Glasgow. But it’s the cup final! We had to be there, disciplinary if not. It finished at 3pm. The chief executive at the time blew his whistle. We had a taxi waiting outside. We got to Hampden, 1-0 down by that time….you already knew.”

He remembers being overwhelmed by a desire to celebrate all this fabulous team had done throughout the season in contrast to the awful, sickening dejection of Dens seven days earlier. And that seems like an appropriate reaction. How many players in the current Hearts team, who are flying so high that they have already beaten both sides of the Old Firm home and away, would get into that side? Even Lawrence Shankland, the skipper and inspiration now, would struggle for a place in the front line.

“Of the core 12 or so used that season, only a few of the current side would get in,” Searl says, reasonably. “Neil Berry did his bit but Beni Baningime is better. Colquhoun, Clark and Robertson – even Shankland might struggle to get in ahead of, say, Robbo as the goalscorer. And Levein and (Sandy) Jardine at the back, just superb.”

That Was The Team That Was, a series broadcast by BBC Scotland in 2006, profiled the ’86 side. Aaron recorded the programme and invited his dad round to watch. “I remember thinking, ‘I am not sure I can get through this’....Just to hear the players reflecting….and getting upset, even then”. Two decades on from when that programme aired, Searl is himself welling up over his gnocchi. Football, bloody hell.

How raw must it all have felt on the day itself? Nobody spoke on the way home, Searl recalls. The only voice heard was that of John Greig, the match summariser, on Radio Scotland: "He was saying, 'There's grown men everywhere, crying. It's awful.'" As for Searl and his mates, they sat dolefully over their pints in a pub on the Royal Mile before calling it a night.

Knox seemed genuinely sympathetic towards Hearts. The opposition manager admitted afterwards that he was “as heartbroken for them as us” – Dundee’s win, although a famous one, earned nothing tangible. Rangers’ victory over Motherwell nixed hopes of a return to Europe for the first time in over a decade.

A little naughtily, the front cover of the programme for Dundee’s first home league game the following season against St Mirren featured a photograph of disconsolate Hearts supporters. In a way, the Dens Park club will be missing a trick if they don’t play on the psychodrama element to Sunday’s fixture this time around. Ramp it up. Pictures of Kidd, who’s now based in Australia, above the tunnel, that sort of thing. Hearts, when managed by Levein, travelled to face Dundee in October 2018 top of the league and won 3-0 to stretch their lead to six points.

But have they ever been top at Dens at such a late-ish stage of the season since ’86? They were a long way off being favourites to finish champions seven years ago. They currently occupy this status with some bookmakers. Some observers believe it’s theirs to lose.

Not Searl, of course. Few Hearts fans have adopted this position given how hard-bitten they are by experience. But one thing Searl and others might like to know is the fate of that damn clock. According to Dens Park stadium manager Jim Thomson, it was blown off in a storm sometime in the early 2000s and was smashed to pieces. Who knows where the time goes? Well, we know now.