Kingsley glad Hearts’ faithful players rewarded for loyalty

Stephen Kingsley is glad that he and his Hearts teammates who have come through tough times at Tynecastle now have a chance to “do something special”, with the Edinburgh club top of the Scottish Premiership table.

The 31-year-old left-back, who joined Hearts in 2020, has experienced several highs and lows alongside Craig Halkett, Cammy Devlin, Beni Baningime and Lawrence Shankland.

These players are now key figures in a Hearts side six points clear at the summit of Scottish football heading into Saturday’s Edinburgh derby with Hibernian.

“The boys that have been here for a while, obviously we’ve had great occasions, great moments, great seasons where we’ve finished where we wanted to finish,” said Kingsley in a reference to the 2021 second-tier Championship title win and third-place top-flight finishes in 2022 and 2024.

“We’ve hit objectives, we’ve played in Europe, we’ve had cup runs, and we’ve had a lot of disappointments in that as well.”

The 31-year-old defender added: “We’ve had down moments where it has been very difficult, but you talk about the spine of the team, that core group of players, we’ve always stuck together, we’ve always believed in each other that we can do something special.

“To be on this run just now, to have had that start to the season and something to build on going into the new year and something to strive for –- something that many people probably wouldn’t have expected at the beginning of the campaign -– it’s brilliant.”

“And it’s extra special doing it with the boys that I’ve been with for five or six years now.”

Not since Aberdeen, under celebrated manager Alex Ferguson, won the title in 1984/85 has a club other than Glasgow giants Celtic and Rangers been crowned champions of Scotland.

But Hearts now have a realistic chance to end that period of Old Firm dominance as they seek a first Scottish title of their own in 66 years.

“We’ve always had belief in what we can do, we’ve believed that we can have a special season,” said Kingsley.

“You don’t know how that’s going to be, no one can look into the future, so it’s just about setting ourselves targets that we can hit and obviously the longer that goes on then we can start looking forward.

“But Hibs is such a massive game, I think it would be stupid for anyone to think of anything further on than that. There’s so much to look forward to just now that I think looking too far ahead would be a big mistake.

“We’ve not done that so far and it’s worked pretty well for us, so why do it now?”