Officers were stationed outside his home at night, however it didn’t stop the outside of his home in Cramond being daubed with graffiti and Hands off Hibs stickers. The new owners divided the Club into three sections: the parent company Edinburgh Hibernian PLC looking after the interests of the football team, Hibernian Leisure and Hibernian Land and Property, responsible for any future business investments, and to examine the possible expansion of the group. While they were speculating as to who this mystery person might be, possibly Robert Maxwell, they were astounded when who should enter the room but the Hearts Chairman Wallace Mercer. “Sheila deserves a huge amount of credit, she earned a huge amount of respect for standing up for the club,” Frank Dougan, former assistant treasurer at Sunnyside said. He turned round and told them no, and that the amount of people there was going to double, then treble, then quadruple, every day until they stopped backing it. Several supporters had also staged a five-week-long picket of the Bank of Scotland's main offices on the Mound. It wouldn't be the last. The financial intrigue deepened in February 1989, when Avon Inns, a chain of 15 properties in the West Country, was purchased for around £5.75 million, the money to be raised by a new shares issue. Nonchalant. “Football is a funny business,” Easter Road legend Pat Stanton told Edinburgh Live . Attended by supporters from all over the country many from Hearts, several former Hibs players including Pat Stanton, Jimmy O'Rourke, Tony Higgins and Jackie McNamara all rallied to the cause, with messages of support from golfer Bernard Gallacher and Gordon Strachan. For the sale to be legally forced through, the magic number of 76 percent had to be reached. In the final part of our series, Wallace Mercer finally admits defeat in his attempts to purchase Hibs and the 'team that wouldn't die' takes its rightful place in history, Join your fellow Hibees and subscribe to the Hibs FC newsletter now. He spoke of a new dawn for the Scottish game, one that involved a unified team from the city taking on the West of Scotland power base. Mercer meanwhile had countered with his outrageous statement, claiming that 'he hoped the people could see what Hearts were trying to do - make Edinburgh a force in Scottish and European football'. People power rarely wins against big business, unless regulations like Germany’s 50+1 rule are specifically codified for this, or the rare case of Hands Off Hibs. This benefitted the shareholders by giving them the freedom to invest in teams without taking on personal liability for debt. Dispatched to the stadium, he too took his place among the crowd as they waited for confirmation. Caught up in the maelstrom, it seems like Duff was a man who quickly realised he was well out of his depth. It just doesn’t work like that. On-field chaos was overlooked on the notion that the club was stable financially. Mercer and his family were given round the clock police protection. In time the motives behind this last statement would become apparent. With a squad decimated and financial issues continuing to wreak havoc, the 1991/92 campaign should have been another slog for the men in green and white, but so often Scottish football throws up divine intervention when it is least expected. Furthermore, subsequent bids for other clubs would now be forced into taking the sheer depth of football fandom into consideration. "When we had the rally at Easter Road, Joe Baker went on to the pitch and kissed the turf. Part four of this series will be published on Edinburgh Live tomorrow, For more Hibs news join our new group Hibs Live - News, transfer rumours and chat from Easter Road, The Hands off Hibs 'Battle Bus' on its tour of Edinburgh (Image: Scotland's Game), When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. He explained: "We took about 40 or 50 of the guys go in and open an account then join the back of the queue and close it again. 'At the end of the day, I thought that it would be unfair of us to take their money and then give the company to someone who wanted to shut down the Club. This is the story of Hands Off Hibs, told by those who wrote it. It was clear that Hearts fans were as uncomfortable with the future prospect as Hibs fans were enraged. Visit https://www.scotsman.com/subscriptions now to sign up. Branding the episode a near miss, Kenny says Mercer's grossly underestimated the passion among the Hibs faithful, but reckons the club came out of the ordeal stronger and more unified than before. While the public campaign was dominating the domestic news, certain unsavoury parts were making headlines for the wrong reasons. Capitalism at its worst; non-sentimental. “It was all about making a noise, it was all about getting noticed,” he said. It was Machiavellian politicking done right. Daily Record front page 14/7/90 Wallace Mercer of Hearts fails to buy Hibs football club Nicholas Ridley resigns, Kenny McLean Sr was the backbone of the Hands off Hibs campaign, Hands off Hibs at 30: 'The petition arrived at Downing Street on the same day as Nelson Mandela', Hands off Hibs at 30: 'We blared Sunshine on Leith from a bus while driving through Gorgie', How you can keep up to date with all the latest sport news from Edinburgh Live, Hearts and Hibs could play at Murrayfield on the same weekend according to Scottish Rugby chief, Hibs Live - News, transfer rumours and chat from Easter Road, Hearts and Hibs fan return latest as Jason Leitch makes 'small crowds' prediction, The National Clinical Director reckons we could see supporters back in stadiums before the end of the season, The 124-year-old statistic Hibs must overcome against Hearts in Scottish Cup semi-final. “There were people hanging out their windows waving Hearts scarves in support,” McEwan recalled. They had an announcement to make. Spurred on by the support shown from the wider footballing community at the Easter Road rally, McEwan, enthusiastically taking on his role as head of public awareness for the campaign, had rallied the troops to disrupt any organisations thought to be backing the ‘merger’. The Hibs Supporters Club subsequently made £20,000 available for additional shares, bolstered by Edinburgh businessman and Kwik-Fit founder Sir Tom Farmer who began to invest substantially in the club. Read  |  The merger of Caledonian and Thistle: how the united Highlanders would make history within two decades. A survey of football clubs by Price Waterhouse suggested that along with Dunfermline, the balance sheets of both Hearts and Hibs were amongst the weakest in Scotland. Later that evening at a packed Hibs Supporters Clubrooms, with hundreds more locked outside, a Hands Off Hibs committee had been formed led by the former Easter Road director Kenny McLean and a fighting fund set-up that included £20,000 donated by the Supporters Association and £1000 from an anonymous Hearts supporter opposed to Mercer's plans. In a diary leaked by the Daily Record during June 1990, the Hearts chairman described his wife and children receiving threatening phone calls, while authorities were called in on one morning when a bullet was sent in the post. You can unsubscribe at any time. That’s not what fans saw, though. Before the Against Modern Football movement was branded as such, a prototype of the model came from Scotland in a neighbourhood going through its own, more widespread gentrification process. Rowland informed them that a bid was in the offing from a source that would not be to their liking. Visitors have reported a range of paranormal anomalies, with the ghost of Mary Queen of Scots said to wander the halls at night. Rowland was gifted almost 30% of the original share issue, valued at £1.2 million, an unusually high return said to have been for his expertise in overseeing the takeover and the share issue. With shares priced at 55p each, for a minimum investment of just £198 the ordinary man in the street could now own part of the Club. “That day was utter chaos,” Willie laughed, “We had about 40 or 50 there on the first day and no one else could get near the counter.”. No one else knew about it. He called off his attempt to destroy Hibs, claiming that 'although he had won the financial argument, he lost by the sheer ferocity of emotion displayed by the fans of the Easter Road club.' explains more about how we use your data, and your rights. Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. In these halcyon days, Hibernian faced their most trying period. The Hibs’ board had fallen for the figures. Now it felt like Scotland’s broken one. Hands off Hibs at 30: The story of the movement that saved the Easter Road club, told by those who wrote it Mandela, Mercer, McLean and 40 days that changed football in Edinburgh forever Willie was tasked with handling public awareness and all that went with it, including making up t-shirts, pin badges, petitions and leaflets, as well as organising what would turn out to be packed rallies Easter Road and the Usher Hall. McLean Sr ended up on a newly revised board after a consortium headed up by Tom Farmer was successful in its purchase of the club a few months later, but the perilous state of the club’s finances had been laid bare by Mercer’s bid. ©JPIMedia Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. An emotional rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone rang out through the terraces – a raw display only rivalled by the now iconic 2016 Scottish Cup rendition of Sunshine on Leigh a quarter-century later. The hostile bid, however, had exposed the Club's precarious financial position and regardless of a near £1 million received from Celtic for the sale of John Collins, a few months later after failing to pay a VAT bill, receivers arrived. The reaction to that was something else.". Beyond defying the scenario at hand, they were there to make sure it never happened again. ', Left to right: Jim Gray, David Duff and Kenny Waugh, A banner at a match in protest of Wallace Mercer's takeover bid (pic: Eric McCowat), A banner at a match in protest of Wallace Mercer's takeover bid (pic: Crawford Tait). You can unsubscribe at any time. Fans took to the streets selling the eponymous merchandise, collecting money in buckets and even picketing the Bank of Scotland offices for days to protest the backing they gave to the bid. In Scotland it might have been safer to be pictured with the devil – the public were once bitten, twice shy. League not involved – yet, 5 June. On the open top deck of a bus battering towards Tynecastle, two speakers blasted out Sunshine on Leith as a collection of green and white clad Hibees sang in chorus. Still, to his credit Duff refused to sell, urging the Hibs supporters and other institutions to reject the hostile bid. Hands off Hibs at 30: 'This was not a takeover, it was footballing genocide', Hands off Hibs at 30: Stanton, The Proclaimers and the second coming, Hibs Live - News, transfer rumours and chat from Easter Road, Hearts and Hibs fan return latest as Jason Leitch makes 'small crowds' prediction, The National Clinical Director reckons we could see supporters back in stadiums before the end of the season, The 124-year-old statistic Hibs must overcome against Hearts in Scottish Cup semi-final.

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