LINLITHGOW & DISTRICT HEARTS SUPPORTERS CLUB
(aka S.Q.B.B.BL.)  25th ANNIVERSARY DINNER DANCE

Was held in the Beancross Millenium suite on Saturday 26th October. 180 Hearts fans were in attendance and a great evening was had by all. The evening was also attended by ex players Henry Smith and Kenny Black. Andy Webster was there to receive his young player of the year trophy and Kevin McKenna received the player of the year trophy on behalf of Anti Niemi. Thanks to all who attended.

CLUB HISTORY

Think back to the summer of 1977. Hearts have just been relegated for the first time in their 103 year history and the club has entered it's darkest ever period. At this point you may think that a supporters club would be thinking about winding up.

Enter a group of guys from Linlithgow, Bo'ness, Blackness and South Queensferry. The prospect of visiting exotic places like Methil, Dumfries, Alloa and Greenock was too exciting to miss. We met in a pub called the Unicorn in Linlithgow (sadly now it's a shop), and a new club was born. We called it SQBBL (pronounced Skwibble) in respect of the names of all the towns belonging to the founder members.

The club was destined for success from day 1, with 60 people on a 53 seater. In the early days, more people went to the game than came back from the game (not always through anything they had done I might add). Partially due to our success, the Ferry contingent decided they could run their own bus, and it was at this point we renamed the club "Linlithgow and District Hearts".

Things could have gone either way in those days and I remember two particular times, one in 1978 when Hearts lost 10 games in a row and there was one car with two people in it went to Parkhead for the last game of the season. The other was an away trip to Berwick (probably in 1980) when we had 9 people on a 53 seater.

Fortunately Hearts revived and so did our fortunes as a club. We were promoted and we qualified for Europe. We ran a bus to Paris on the cheap (£36). For that you got 2 nights in a bus and 3 days on the bevvy! We refined the process a bit for the next trips to Dublin and Munich. By the time we went to Liege our members were expecting luxury, which is what they got when we arrived in the same hotel as the Liege team!

In recent times, we have had to widen our area and have taken on Falkirk and Grangemouth. With the help of Grant Thorburn nearly 50% of the membership comes from those areas and we are able to run quality buses to nearly all games.

None of it would be possible without Gordon Dundas who was instrumental in the setup of the club, ran the bus for years with sterling support from Willie Ruffle, Ian Shiells, Andy Neill and  Craig Young. Although most of our finances (managed expertly by Eric Fleming) come about from the sales of NO IDLE TALK, many of you won't know that it was Gordon's idea while sitting in the Spiders Web in 1989. I just carried out his idea and continued it.

Long live Linlithgow and District Hearts Supporters Club

Craig Young

Bring on the next 25 years 

this section maintained by Craig Young