Big interview: Kevin Thomas recalls how his promising Hearts career unraveled just weeks after his Scottish Cup heroics against Rangers

As Hearts prepare to host Rangers in the Scottish Cup for the first time in quarter of a century, it seems like an opportune week in which to catch up with Kevin Thomas.

On 20 February 1995 - 25 years ago last week - the Tynecastle side pulled off a famous 4-2 victory over Walter Smith’s formidable team. For context, Hearts, who were enduring an underwhelming league campaign under Tommy McLean, hadn’t won any of their previous 14 meetings with a Rangers side in the midst of their quest to win nine league titles in a row. That exhilarating Monday evening under the lights in Gorgie provided a 19-year-old Thomas with one of the most notable moments of his injury-hampered career.

Hearts had been 2-0 up at half-time through Colin Miller and Dave McPherson before Brian Laudrup and Gordon Durie hit back for the visitors. John Robertson edged the hosts back in front before Thomas sparked jubilant scenes in front of the recently-built Wheatfield Stand when he fired in the sixth and final goal of one of the most dramatic Scottish Cup ties Tynecastle has witnessed.

“To be honest, that game isn’t something that crosses my mind too often but I’ve got a friend out here whose son is Hearts-daft and he sent me the video of it a few days ago - it must have come up on one of Hearts’ social media pages on the 25th anniversary,” Thomas, who has been based in Tenerife for the past 15 years, told the Evening News. “It was a brilliant game, absolutely fantastic.”

Thomas’s goal came in the 89th minute when he used his blistering pace to get into the right position to knock the ball into the net following a trademark “rampage” out of defence from McPherson. “You never knew what Big Davie was going to do when he rampaged forward - he was quite famous for that,” recalls Thomas. “He ran down a bit of an alleyway, played it to me out wide and he kept running. I played it back into him and the manager was screaming behind me to chase after him. That’s all I did. Davie put himself down another blind alleyway, turned back and played it to me. Ally Maxwell thought I was going to put it across him into the far corner and I just put in the other corner at the near post. I remember it well.”

Sadly for Thomas, recollections of that evening when he scored his ninth competitive goal for Hearts aren’t quite as positive as they should be. Instead of proving a catalyst for the highly-rated teenager, history has shown that it was effectively the beginning of the end of his career at Tynecastle. Just three weeks later Thomas tore his cruciate ligament in the Scottish Cup quarter-final victory at home to Dundee United. Although he remembers in vivid detail how his knee “collapsed” when turning awkwardly, he wasn’t aware of the extent of his injury at time and played on through the pain.

Even afterwards, the seriousness of it wasn’t immediately evident to medics and after resting for a couple of weeks, he returned as a substitute in a league game against Partick Thistle and then the Scottish Cup semi-final defeat by Airdrieonians in April. When his knee “collapsed” for a second time in the closing minutes of that ill-fated match at Hampden, it became clear that serious damage had been done. After undergoing an operation on his 20th birthday, he spent almost a year on the sidelines before returning to action towards the end of Jim Jefferies’ first season in charge. Thomas, who joined Hearts aged 16 from Salvesen Boys Club, was never the same player again. He left Hearts in 1998 and eventually dropped out of the senior game in 2002 - aged just 26 - following stints at Morton, St Johnstone, Berwick Rangers and Montrose.

Speaking from Sinatra’s, the restaurant he owns in Costa Adeje, Thomas said: “It’s bitter-sweet memories for me because I scored that goal against Rangers to help us through to the next round but in the quarter-final against Dundee United I snapped my cruciate. I don’t worry about it now but I used to think where would my career have taken me if we hadn’t got through that night and that injury hadn’t happened. It totally impacted my career.

“When I had the operation I was told I would probably only have a maximum of six to eight years left in professional football. The best-case scenario would be that I could get another operation further down the line. If it had happened 20 years later, I would have had a far better chance of getting back to my best. Players these days can get back from a cruciate in six months. I was out for basically a full year and even then I was probably brought back too soon.

“After the injury I had to learn how to play football again. Before it, I was probably as fast as anybody in Scottish football and then when I came back I had lost my pace. I basically had to learn to be a hitman who could hold the ball up as opposed to being a striker who could do a bit of everything and run in behind. My game was all about pace when I was younger, and I lost that after the injury.”

Thomas officially remained a Hearts player until just after the 1998 Scottish Cup final victory over Rangers, but it had become clear for much of the previous two years, when he featured fleetingly off the bench and then spent time on loan at Stirling Albion, that he wasn’t going to get back to a level that would allow him to feature prominently in Jefferies’ ever-improving team. His time at Hearts fizzled out in stark contrast to his exciting arrival on the scene. Thomas, who had been a rugby-playing Hibs supporter prior to joining Hearts in 1992, made a goal-scoring debut against Falkirk under Joe Jordan in February 1993.

As a budding young centre-forward from South Queensferry, Thomas pinpoints the presence of Jordan and Sandy Clark, who would become manager, at Hearts as key reasons why he snubbed the team he had preferred as a boy. “I had the chance to go to Hibs or Hearts when I turned 16,” he recalls. “Alex Miller was the Hibs manager at the time and he thought I’d make a good centre-half but I’d never played there in my life. At the time the Hearts manager was Joe Jordan and Sandy Clark was the youth-team manager. So you had probably the best centre-forward Scotland’s ever had in Joe and one of the best domestic hitmen in Sandy. I knew they could teach me the position, and they did.

“Joe Jordan, for me, was by far and the best manager I ever had. It didn’t really work out for him at Hearts because he had some problems with the older players but he was absolutely brilliant with the younger ones. Sandy Clark was also brilliant when he took over. But it was Tommy McLean who I actually did best under. I don’t know why it happened but I went from being mainly a youth team and occasionally playing for the reserves to suddenly being a regular in the first team that season under Tommy. I was either starting or on the bench most weeks. Tommy didn’t pick youngsters and boys like Allan Johnston were miles ahead of me, but for some reason he picked me. He got the sack just after I tore my cruciate and by the time I came back Jim Jefferies was the manager and had signed new strikers, so it was always going to be a struggle for me.”

Thomas first broke into the Hearts team at a time when they had a solid core of long-serving senior players, including Robertson, McPherson, Gary Mackay, Henry Smith, John Colquhoun, Craig Levein and Alan McLaren. “The older boys were in with the bricks and had a big influence at the club but I didn’t care about that as long as I was getting a game of football,” he said. “They were all getting a bit older. Before I did my knee I was very fast and I worked well alongside Robbo. I was quite a big lad physically and I wasn’t in awe of them but I did try and learn from them. I probably learned the most from Craig Levein and Alan McLaren because I feel you learn more as a striker from listening to what centre-backs do to try and stop you.”

The most enjoyable part of being at Hearts for Thomas was the camaraderie he had with his fellow youngsters from the highly-regarded 1993 BP Youth Cup-winning side. “Apart from the injury side of it, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Hearts,” he said. “A lot of boys will tell you that once you get into the first team, being a footballer can become more like a job. For me, those first two years on the YTS were probably the most enjoyable in my career. It was just good fun to come through with all the other boys like Gary Locke, Allan Johnston, Paul Ritchie, Allan McManus, Grant Murray, David Murie, Myles Hogarth, Mark Bradley, Stuart Callaghan. All of us went on to have professional careers. We were all really good friends and I stay in touch with a lot of them to this day. My Hearts career was all about these boys.”