Hearts kicked off their Scottish Premiership home campaign this afternoon – and the Jambos should be ashamed at the state of the Tynecastle pitch.
Almost half of the pitch looks to be dead after Tynecastle hosted the LA Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Edinburgh Festival, with pundit Michael Stewart tweeting a picture from before today’s clash with Ross County.
While the pitch should grow back, it’s really not a great look for the first home league game of the season and almost certainly won’t be conducive to entertaining football.
Clubs obviously have to do what they can to maximise their income and hosting concerts can be a big money-spinner but when it can have a detrimental effect such as this then clubs really need to think about it a bit more.
A 0-0 draw with Ross County, in which the visitors hit the post with a penalty, won’t have helped matters much and the Jambos groundstaff face a big task getting the pitch looking halfway respectable again.
Given the state of the pitch currently, the fact that Hearts trained on it on Friday is absolutely laughable and shows a real contempt towards paying fans.
Hearts will no doubt contend that there are no problems with the pitch but even the briefest of looks at it show big bald patches over a number of areas.
Then again, perhaps it suits Craig Levein to revert to type and hoof long balls up front, avoiding the need to keep the ball on the deck an actually try to play football.