Bricked windows & cult heroes - Edinburgh derby day

Martin Boyle's 95th-minute leveller snatched a point for Hibs in the first derby this season

The Edinburgh derby. More blood and sweat than pass and move, but a compelling spectacle all the same.

Here, three veterans of the game shed a light on the magnitude, the emotions and the tumult of the battle to be crowned kings of Scotland's capital.

'Our bus got bricked that night'

In October 2013, Hearts were bottom of the table with a callow squad. They started the season on minus 15 points as punishment for entering administration and were rank outsiders to knock Hibs out of the League Cup at Easter Road.

Ryan Stevenson was one of Hearts' remaining senior players. That day, he lashed in the winner in a 1-0 victory.

Hibs had James McPake sent off and the bad feeling spilled over, home fans waiting to confront Hibs boss Pat Fenlon, who left his post two days later.

"Our bus got bricked that night. The side window had been put in when we came out so we had to get escorted away," Stevenson recalls. "It gives you a wee bit more motivation for the next one.

"I understood my record as well: 'I've not lost here in so many games, I'm definitely not losing this one'. It just kept propelling us. We just knew how to win derbies, we even knew how to draw games with Hibs when we weren't playing well."

Stevenson played in 15 derbies between 2010 and 2014, losing only three. Hearts bossed the fixture in those days. The management team of Jim Jefferies, Billy Brown and Gary Locke hammered its importance into their players.

Ryan Stevenson's Hearts dominated Hibs during his time at Tynecastle

"We would get on the bus to the stadium and they were playing videos of all the Hearts goals in the derbies, Hearts wins, the Hearts songs playing - you were going to war, basically.

"It was made clear to you how much it meant to the fans; losing was never an option," Stevenson says.

"Even the year we got relegated - 2014 - I remember Hibs coming to Tynecastle knowing a win would relegate us and it was all about how they were coming for a party. The amount of pressure on the young Hearts boys to not get relegated by Hibs...

"I remember going into the changing room and we were all relishing it. We never, ever thought, 'Here we go, we could get relegated today'. It was always just, 'Aye, we'll show them' and we won 2-0.

"In my time at Hearts, we felt Hibs were a bit soft. They had very good players but we had a core of men. Marius Zaliukas, Rudi Skacel, Andy Webster, all boys I would look up to if the games weren't going as well as we'd hoped."

'You know what you're getting from Hearts'

John Hughes was a colossus at the back for Hibernian, ferociously proud of his Leith heritage.

He captained Hibs to a famous 3-0 triumph at Tynecastle in the "millennium derby" of 1999 but never beat Hearts in four attempts as manager at Easter Road.

"We were all football, football, football," he says of the team he led for just over a year from 2009. "It was like two boxers - if they want to come out swinging, we'll just dance around them. That was our whole philosophy. But sometimes in a derby you have to change it.

"You know what you're getting from Hearts. You know it'll get battered right at you and you have to stand up to it."

Making yourself a cult hero

Kevin Kyle won both Edinburgh derbies he played in for Hearts

Kevin Kyle loved his two years at Tynecastle. The towering striker rattled home an 86th-minute derby winner at Tynecastle on New Year's Day in 2011, etching himself into Hearts folklore.

"When I signed, I didn't know what it would be like," he says. "When I arrived and experienced it, I realised it's a massive club. The fans have big expectations and it can be too much for some of the players.

"Even now, every time I go to Edinburgh somebody knows me or says, 'there's the big man, scored in a New Year derby against Hibs'. It's only one goal but I'm a cult hero because of that. I appreciate that, it's absolutely magic.

"That day I did the man-of-the-match speech, jumped in the car and went home and had a Chinese with the missus. Now I think, 'Why didn't I go out in Edinburgh that night and milk it?'"