Derby classics: Burley leaves spectacular legacy from sole taste of capital clash

Tynecastle: 7 August 2005

Hearts 4, Hibernian 0

THE Hearts team which kicked off the 2005-06 season had an unfamiliar look about it, having been hastily assembled by George Burley over a few weeks of the close season following his appointment as manager at the end of June. Given the number of new faces, there were concerns among the club's supporters about the length of time the new line-up might need before it could gel.

The initial omens were good, as Hearts opened their season with a 4-2 win at Kilmarnock. But that could have been a one-off, and certainly few of those who assembled at Tynecastle the following week expected anything like the one-sided match which ensued.

Managed by Tony Mowbray, Hibs had such able footballers as Steven Whittaker, Gary Caldwell, Kevin Thomson and Guillaume Beuzelin in the team, not to mention the former Hearts player Michael Stewart. Derek Riordan was unable to start the match after missing three days' training in the week preceding the game, but he was on the bench, and overall the Hibs squad's experience of the derby might have been expected to tell against such novices as Julien Brellier, Rudi Skacel and Roman Bednar. Instead, they were lucky in the end to finish second best.

The fireworks began before the match, thanks to Phil Anderton, the Hearts chief executive, who had brought his penchant for pyrotechnics with him from his previous post with the Scottish Rugby Union. They were nothing, however, compared to what followed.

Skacel, who had also scored in that opening win at Rugby Park, got the opening goal – then got a yellow card for over-celebrating. Mowbray was then sent to the stands by referee Hugh Dallas, and worse was to follow for Hibs when Caldwell was taken off midway through the first half with an injury which was later diagnosed as a punctured lung and a fractured rib.

Still, having been under the cosh for much of the opening 45 minutes, Hibs took heart from the fact that they had only conceded one goal and were therefore still very much in the game. They began the second half brightly, and might even have equalised when Thomson chipped just wide of Craig Gordon's goal.

But that was the high-water mark of their resurgence. Once Paul Hartley put the home team two up from the penalty spot there was only going to be one winner.

Stephen Simmons made it three when he collected a pass from Lee Wallace and shot past Zibi Malkowski, and the scoring was rounded off a few minutes from time by Saulius Mikoliunas, one of the first Lithuanians to join the club following Vladimir Romanov's taking of a major shareholding earlier in the year.

Romanov was there in person along with Anderton and the Hearts chairman George Foulkes, and by the end of the game the Kaunas-based businessman was waving his scarf in the air along with the rest of the home support.

There had been talk of the 'Romanov revolution' at Hearts since he bought into the club, but this was the first manifestation on a grand scale of what the Tynecastle side were capable of given their new spending power.

Still, while the home fans' celebrations went into overdrive, Burley for one was not getting carried away. "It could take another two to three weeks before we finally form a team," he said.

"Some of the new signings are not fully fit. There are still areas where we can get stronger. There is still a lot of work to be done.

"Remember how far behind Rangers and Celtic we finished last season. They have squads that are full of top international players. If we manage to finish third and take the club back into Europe then that would be tremendous."

Hearts did get back into Europe at the end of what turned out to be a momentous and traumatic season. And they did get stronger in the ensuing weeks, just as Burley had said they would need to.

In fact, for months after the man who is now the Scotland manager parted company with the club, they were still capable of playing the kind of confident, fast-passing, high-energy game they showcased in this early-season encounter.

They were also capable of turning over Hibs, as they proved not only at Tynecastle, where they won 4-1 in the league the following January, but also at Hampden, where they won 4-0 in the Scottish Cup semi-final.

They did not have everything their own way, however, and one match in particular that season was to be a real source of solace for Hibs supporters. But on a summer's evening in Gorgie three years ago all that was unknown and unborn. The Hearts fans were content, for a few hours at least, to live in the present and savour a spectacular win.

Hearts: Gordon, Neilson, Webster, Pressley, McAllister, Mikoliunas, Brellier (Wallace 69), Hartley, Skacel, Bednar (MacFarlane 74), Elliot (Simmons 52). Subs not used: MacDonald, Cesnauskis, Berra, Tierney.

Scorers: Skacel 13, Hartley 58 pen, Simmons 71, Mikoliunas 83.

Hibernian: Malkowski, Whittaker, Smith, Caldwell (Hogg 27), Murphy, Beuzelin, Stewart, Thomson, Glass (Riordan 63), O'Connor, Konte (Sproule 63). Subs not used: Simon Brown, Morrow, Murray, Shields.

Referee: S Dougal.

Attendance: 16,459.