Your average football fan is no mere casual supporter; he is born into a club, baptised by a parent in a replica kit a few sizes too large, perhaps with a sprinkling of beer in lieu of some holy water. His cheeks are daubed with his team’s colours every match day, and he is catechised weekly on why this year will finally be "our year".
The club this fan supports is his denomination: the football ground is his place of worship, fixtures are his holy days, and you may witness him consulting the league table with the anxious devotion of a religious fanatic. Your average football fan will consider it apostasy to change teams; to support the wrong one is a moral failing; and Lord help you if you suggest that football "doesn’t really matter" within his hearing, you heretic!
Indeed, living next door to a football pub — specifically one supporting Hibernian FC — makes for quite an interesting time. Quite regularly I can peer outside my bedroom window and spot a crowd of half-cut green-clad men, ranging in age from early teens to late middle-age, weaving and stumbling through the streets of Leith, cheering or commiserating depending on the final score.
Just the other day I was loitering outside Stromash nightclub, waiting for my friends to spill out so we could go home. An older Glaswegian guy — balding, beefy, and bespectacled — struck up conversation with me. After learning my father was Glaswegian, he asked me which football team I supported: Celtic or Rangers? I wasn’t prepared for the question but hesitatingly admitted Dad had supported Rangers (being a Presbyterian, that much was obvious). It was the wrong answer. His face fell and I had to scramble to redeem myself, assuring him that whatever my father’s sins, I myself was Celtic-adjacent—as a proud Leither, I was firmly in the Hibs camp.
The Old Firm — the collective term for the Glasgow-based football teams Celtic and Rangers — is perhaps the best-known football rivalry in the UK. But there’s another rivalry — less fearsome and less internationally notorious but no less cherished by its adherents: that between the Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian.
The Hearts were established in 1874 by a circle of friends with a shared enthusiasm for football. The club’s name came from their membership in the Heart of Midlothian Quadrille Assembly Club, a genteel dancing society (itself borrowing the title from Walter Scott’s novel). Hibernian FC was founded a year later by members of Edinburgh’s Irish immigrant community, and from the outset carried a distinct cultural identity rooted in migration, faith, and solidarity. The clubs first met on Christmas Day 1875, when Hearts won 1-0. Since then, the rivals have met hundreds of times, mostly in the top level of the Scottish football league system, with occasional detours into the lower divisions. Beyond league football, their competition has spilled into domestic cup tournaments, including two Scottish Cup finals in 1896 and 2012, both claimed by Hearts (but don’t remind Hibs of this).
The two clubs are separated by only three miles, with Hearts’ Tyncastle Park to the west of the city in Gorgie and the Hibs holding court at Easter Rd to the north in Leith (just a short walk from my house). Every time derby day comes around (i.e. a match between the two rivals), the city erupts into a cacophony of maroon and green. What makes the Edinburgh derby particularly fierce is its intimacy — the sheer closeness of the teams and their supporters. The Hearts vs Hibs rivalry is not one that can be easily escaped by switching neighbourhoods or changing social circles — Edinburgh is a small city.
Living so close to both clubs, I’ve seen how the city’s history seeps into the rivalry. Leith’s history as a port and a working-class district, for example, rendered it fertile ground for migrant communities, including Irish Catholics. Hibernian FC, being explicitly established by Irish Catholics, was for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries strongly associated with Irish Catholic identity, mutual aid societies, and migrant solidarity. Consequently, Leith developed a reputation (albeit sometimes exaggerated) as Hibs territory. Today, Leith is much more gentrified, international, and mixed. It’s possible to find Hearts supporters (such as my hairdresser) scattered among the sea of Hibs, and you’ll certainly find a good number of people who don’t care about football at all.
The Edinburgh derby also serves as a safe substitute for older divisions. When compared to Glasgow, for example, the fierce emotions once invested in religion, class conflict, or imperial identity have largely ebbed in Edinburgh. However, some degree of muscle memory remains. Hearts vs Hibs offers a convenient repository for these instincts — on derby day, one can despise the other side wholeheartedly only to return to polite civic coexistence by Monday morning. This rivalry is an opportunity for Edinburgh to rehearse division without actually meaning it, to indulge tribal feeling without suffering its historical costs.
In a sense, the Edinburgh derby is not so much a sporting contest as it is a city-wide performance. Edinburgh is, after all, a city that well understands theatre. Come derby day and you’ll hear football chants echoing through the streets like folk songs during the Fringe festival — instead of street performers and buskers you’ll find fans decked out in maroon and green, all united in the carefully rehearsed rituals of matchday routine. The derby is an immersive spectacle; it is not merely watched, but rather enacted.
It’s all a bit ridiculous; after all, neither club regularly reaches the upper echelons of European football. But that’s exactly why I cherish this rivalry. Edinburgh likes to think of itself as a civilised city, one which prides itself on its rich and glorious history of ideas, books, and appearing sensible when compared with their rowdy neighbour Glasgow. Hearts versus Hibs offers the rare opportunity to be gloriously irrational in public, and as anyone who knows me will attest, there’s nothing I like more than being a little silly and irrational.
— Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
