The minute’s silence which will be held before the William Hill Premiership match between Hearts and Dundee United at Tynecastle on Remembrance Sunday, though, will be particularly poignant for those followers of the top flight leaders who will be in attendance.

The annual commemoration always evokes thoughts of McCrae’s Battalion – the team that went to war for Great Britain – among the maroon-clad hordes and this year will be no different despite the growing excitement there is about their impressive start to the season.

There were Hibernian, Raith Rovers, Falkirk, Dunfermline Athletic and East Fife in the 16th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Scots – the first of the so-called footballers or pals battalions to be raised during the First World War in 1914.

But no fewer than 16 players from Hearts, who were widely considered to be one of finest sides in Britain and were leading the Scottish league at the time, enlisted in a unit which is named after its charismatic colonel Sir George McCrae, the former Liberal MP for Edinburgh East, along with 500 supporters.

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McCrae’s Battalion suffered devastating casualties during the first day of the Battle of the Somme on the Western Front in France on July 1, 1916. They lost 12 officers and 573 men, nearly 80 per cent of their attacking force.  

Three Hearts footballers, Harry Wattie, Duncan Currie and Ernie Ellis, fell on that fateful day and a fourth, Jimmy Boyd, would later be claimed by a battle which is now considered to be one of the deadliest in human history.

Garry Halliday, the Edinburgh bricklayer who was one of the founding members of the Foundation of Hearts fan ownership group back in 2010, believes that wearing a poppy and honouring the war dead on Remembrance Sunday has a special resonance for him and his fellow supporters because of what happened to their predecessors over a century ago.

“When we were setting up the foundation, our tagline was ‘Own the History, Share the Future’,” he said. “The history of Hearts is unique because of McCrae’s Battalion. For that to be wiped out because of the mismanagement of the club by Vladimir Romanov would have been heartbreaking and soul destroying.

“Can you imagine what the Remembrance service at Haymarket would have been like if there was no longer a football club? I would have been thinking, ‘These guys went to war to save the entire country and we didn’t step up to save our club’. For me, that would have been unbearable.

“I do think the wearing of the poppy and Remembrance Sunday have a special meaning for Hearts as a club and for all Hearts supporters because of McCrae’s Battalion. It is something the club should be built on.”

The Hearts procession from Haymarket to Tynecastle (Image: Alan Rennie/Shutterstock)

Hearts chaplain Andy Prime will conduct the Remembrance Sunday service at the Heart of Midlothian War Memorial at Haymarket on Sunday morning and manager Derek McInnes will perform a reading that honours the team that went to war and the ultimate sacrifice which many of them they made.   

Halliday and the Foundation of Hearts were instrumental in having the memorial – which was moved and damaged during the protracted construction of the tramline in Edinburgh city centre between 2008 and 2014 – repaired and returned to its previous location.  

“Jack Alexander, the author of the McCrae’s Battalion book, and the McCrae’s Battalion Trust did a fantastic job getting the memorial put back up,” he said. “At one stage it looked like it was going to be moved somewhere else. It has moved slightly because of the tram works, but it is essentially where it was before.  

“It took about 12 years to get the funds together. My late friend Robert Craig the architect designed the paving around the Haymarket memorial. He was a Rangers fan, but he ensured it was given a bit more respect than it had before. It wasn’t treated very well when it was in storage unfortunately.

“Bob picked out the quotes which have been carved in the stonework. He sadly passed away before we managed to get the paving done so he didn’t get the chance to see it. But there is a heart with his name on it. We thought that was a fitting tribute to him.

“It is part of Maroon Mile project which is being built just now between the Haymarket memorial and the museum at Tynecastle. There is an opportunity there for schoolkids to learn about it. You don’t want that being lost to future generations.”

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McCrae’s Battalion are also remembered far further afield. Alexander was also instrumental in the construction of a memorial cairn in Contalmaison in France, where many Hearts players lost their lives in the early days of the Battle of the Somme, as well the introduction of an annual ceremony to honour those who lost their lives on July 1.

Halliday attended for the second occasion earlier this year. “It was a wonderful day,” he said. “They erected a marquee and put beer and wine on for everyone. There were armed forces from all over the world there. The club gave the mayoress a gift. They pretty much shut the village. The schoolkids are involved. It is a very poignant ceremony.

“The cairn is made from Clashach sandstone from Scotland. It is the hardest sandstone that you can get. The Hearts crest at the Haymarket memorial is made from the same sandstone. The McCrae’s Battalion Trust raised the funds required to build it and it is fitting that there is something permanent erected in their memory in Contalmaison. 

“I went because of McCrae’s Battalion and what they mean to Hearts. But my great-grandfather William Cook Halliday actually fell at the Battle of the Somme when he was just 33. His grave is not far from Lille so I always visit it when I am in Contalmaison.

“The Foundation of Hearts is something that I am proud of punch of. We have now raised close to £20m and we are in a good place as a club on and off the park. But the way McCrae’s Battalion are remembered should be a source of pride to every Hearts supporter.”