Hearts in sight of Scottish title, but ghosts of 1986 lurk

LONDON, May 7 : The finish line is in sight for Heart of Midlothian as they seek to win their first Scottish title for 66 years and put an end to a seemingly unshakeable Glasgow duopoly.

Hearts travel to Motherwell on Saturday with a three-point lead before a home clash against Falkirk on Wednesday followed by a likely title showdown at Celtic on the final day next weekend.

For fans of the Edinburgh club, the week ahead promises to be an emotional roller-coaster ride and for those of a certain vintage the nightmare of 40 years ago will be all too vivid.

Leaders Hearts arrived at the final day of the 1985-86 season unbeaten in 27 league games, two points ahead of Celtic and requiring just a draw away at Dundee to claim their first title since 1960.

Everything appeared on track until Celtic fan Albert Kidd scored two late goals to give Dundee a 2-0 win at Dens Park. Meanwhile Celtic were romping to a 5-0 victory against St Mirren to snatch the title on goal difference.

The previous season, Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen were champions, but since then no club outside of Glasgow has got a look in, with cynics south of the border sneering that the best way to decide the Scottish title would be for Celtic and Rangers to play each other every week.

ONE-HORSE RACE

Only when Rangers were relegated to Scotland's bottom division in 2012 after going into liquidation did the duopoly end, although that merely turned the following seasons into a one-horse race with Celtic winning the next five titles by 16, 29, 17, 15 and 30 points respectively.

Since the 2018-19 season, normal service has been resumed with the two Glasgow giants operating in a league of their own, albeit with Rangers finishing runners-up six times to their arch-rivals in that time