Oh For Another Skacel!

Former Hearts talisman Rudi Skacel has been speaking to the Evening News about his time with the club during the rather eventful season of 2005/06.

The Czech international midfielder was an absolute revelation in the first half of that season, during which George Burley’s rampant Hearts side swept aside all before them as they charged to the top of the SPL table.

Skacel, who had never before been seen as a prolific goalscorer, scored seven goals in as many matches at the opening of that campaign and although his form dipped after Christmas, he still ended up joint top scorer for the season with 17. Not a bad return from a player who’d previously been a left back in his homeland.

Much has been written about Rudi’s dramatic loss of both form and enthusiasm that year. There are those who believe that he genuinely had a real affinity for Hearts and the supporters and that the treatment of George Burley and the subsequent managerial nonsense that ensued simply got an emotional guy down to the point where he couldn’t perform any more. However there are also those who take the cynical view that he was just another badge-kissing mercenary who only played when he felt like it.

I must admit that in the end I did get a bit fed up with some of Skacel’s antics – some of the geeing up of the crowd gestures seemed a bit hollow by the time it got to March and April, but I do think that he did have at least some sort of affinity with the club, and this is what he’s been trying to suggest in his interview with the News. Here’s what he had to say:

‘I speak to the boys from Hearts all the time and all of the time I look out for the Jambos’ results.

‘What can I say? Every time I see their results and they have lost a game I feel so sorry for their supporters because they deserve better.

‘The fans were good to me and they are fantastic for the team.

‘It is almost two years ago that I left and even then I thought that it would turn out like this because it is not right.

‘The owner picked the team and not the manager and there were a lot of bad things coming out all the time.

‘I had a bad feeling about it and that was the reason that I decided I must move away from the club.

‘I wanted to stay but I had a feeling that something like this would happen and it has maybe even been worse than I thought.

‘Every time I see their result or someone talks about them, I think of the time that I spent there.

‘The supporters were amazing, I have nice memories – and hopefully there will be some good times to come for them over the next few seasons.’

‘It is a shame that the club is in this situation, they are in the bottom six and that should not be happening, they should be competing in the UEFA Cup all of the time, not down at the wrong end of the table.

‘I feel sorry for people who support the Jambos because the situation is not good and it must be difficult also for the players.

‘The season that I played there we were at the top of the league and when things started to go wrong I was angry because we had a very good dressing room, good supporters and a good team.

‘We were a very good family and we won the Scottish Cup.

‘For half the season we were top of the league and if things had been done differently then I think we could have made a better fight for the title with Celtic. We finished the season 15 or 16 points behind Celtic and we were glad we had second place.

‘We will never know if we could have won the league that season, but we could have had a real chance.

‘It got to the stage where no-one knew what was happening from one day to the next and it is not a good situation.

‘In the end I think that it was very lucky that we stayed second because it was a very strange time. We only managed to do that because we had a good support and a good dressing room and we stayed together like a unit.

‘If we hadn’t had these troubles we could have finished a bit better.’

I don’t think there will be too many of us who’ll disagree with that last sentiment, but then we’ve gone over that particular heartbreaker before many times haven’t we?

There will be those who will forever see Rudi Skacel as something of a ‘traitor’ in the end – someone who jumped ship, but I can’t help thinking that perhaps what the club needs almost as much as a new management team with serious direction is in fact another player with the infectious enthusiasm of this little Czech.

He wasn’t perhaps a ‘leader’ in the same way that someone like Steven Pressley was, but he was every bit as influential when he had the desire to go out there and play, and Hearts badly require a fresh injection of enthusiasm to that effect.

I’m not saying that we should go back and try to get Skacel himself to return, but if we could somehow go out there and find someone who could have a similar effect, then surely that could only be a good thing for Hearts?