Hearts, minds, community and the compassion of Ann Budge
Deserved OBE for Hearts honorary president
Football often feels a sport swamped by selfishness, certainly at the elite end. Events at Chelsea with Enzo Maresca and the board certainly suggest that. Some managers think only of their own career, of pastures new. Some owners think only of their way of operating, and ultimately only the financial return. Amidst all this it is uplifting to see Ann Budge, saviour of Heart of Midlothian in 2014 and now honorary president, being named OBE to services to sport and community in the King’s New Year’s Honours list. Budge embodies selflessness.
The Edinburgh entrepreneur habitually defers praise to other Hearts supporters who rallied to rescue the club when it fell into financial distress under the Lithuanian Vladimir Romanov. Wages were in arrears, the club had only £7,000 in the bank at one point in 2013, went into administration and diced with liquidation.
Budge, who actually hailed from a Hibs-supporting family, was a season ticket-holder at Tynecastle with her daughter Carol, who’d fallen in love with Hearts. Carol kept telling her mother about Hearts’ woes. Budge acted. Working with the Foundation of Hearts fans’ group, she rescued the club in May 2014 and became executive chair on a “no-fee basis”. Budge was 66, and could have spent wealth accumulated in a successful career in IT merrily sailing her boat Queen of Hearts around the Med (she named the boat years before she took over the club). Instead of sailing off into the Corfu sunset, Budge set to work at Tynecastle.