Michael Dawson's Tottenham Hotspur strip hangs on a wall in my games room at home.
It’s a permanent reminder that swapping jerseys at the end of what was the biggest game of my life at that point was as close as I got to the guy all night back on August 18, 2011. It wasn’t just me. Dawson and his superstar Spurs team mates left every one of my Hearts team mates nailed to the wall in a Euro lesson not to be forgotten.
The memory of chasing Gareth Bale, Aaron Lennon and Jermain Defoe around Gorgie for 90 minutes still brings me out in a cold sweat. A Europa League play-off Battle of Britain under the lights at a ferocious Tynecastle was meant to be the stuff of dreams. Unfortunately the 5-0 trouncing turned out to be a complete and utter nightmare. When Hearts take on Zurich tomorrow night it will be 11 years to the day since that scudding live on TV. Thankfully this Jambos side are in a far better position to make a real go of their first Euro play-off appearance in a decade. People still say to me ‘remember that night you got pumped off Spurs?’ It makes me sick as it was undoubtedly a missed opportunity and there’s so many regrets.
I’ll never forget standing in the tunnel glancing across at a side that contained Bale, Defoe, Lennon, Rafael van der Vaart, Kyle Walker and Niko Kranjcar. It was proper Premier League razzmatazz and if that doesn’t get you pumped up then nothing will.
Our changing room was buzzing and we had it drummed into us not to concede anything in the first 20-25 minutes. Clearly we needed a bigger drum though as were 3-0 down after 28. I was up front with John Sutton against Dawson and Younes Kabul and all I was thinking about was laying one on somebody early doors as a marker, unsettling them and
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