BY ALAN TEMPLE – @CCP_Sport
HEARTS will roll back the years next season after confirming the name of their new-look stadium will revert to ‘Tynecastle Park’.
The Jambos played their matches on a playing field known as Tynecastle Park – now Wardlaw Street and Wardlaw Place – when they first moved to Gorgie in 1881 and they retained the title when they uprooted to the current site five years later.
In a decision that proved unpopular with the vast majority of supporters, the name of their home in Edinburgh’s west end was changed to ‘Tynecastle Stadium’ in the mid-1990s.
However, Hearts chiefs held talks with supporters as part of the Tynecastle Development Project and it has been decided that the original handle of the ground will be re-instated to coincide with the completion of their new £12 million main stand later this year.
The name change will officially take affect from September, by which point building work is expected to be concluded at Tynecastle, taking the capacity to 20,099.
A club statement read: “It gives the club great pleasure to announce our plan to reinstate “Tynecastle Park” as the name of our new look stadium.
“When the new Tynecastle Development Project was initiated, it came as no great surprise that the question of reversing this name-change was never far from the surface when talking to fans.
“So, with the sadness of the loss of the Archibald Leitch classic [main stand] and the opening of a new chapter in the history of the club, it seems entirely fitting that we honour the club’s long and storied heritage by reinstating the name “Tynecastle Park” when the new Main Stand opens in September 2017.
“Our famous and much loved club song will once again ring literally true, when we raise our voices to sing ‘away up in Gorgie at Tynecastle Park’.”
