AARON MCENEFF IS a Glentoran player these days but a reminder of the place he holds in the hearts of one of his old clubs came at the end of March.

Now 30, the midfielder scored a penalty against Linfield to salvage a 1-1 draw at the Oval. It was a point well-earned, and while not exactly something to celebrate, McEneff could be content with his day’s work.

Before he could head home, he got a tap on the shoulder from a Glentoran official to tell him there was a group of lads in the hospitality area who wanted to see him.

“I was thinking, ‘F**k, what’s this about?’, as I was walking up,” McEneff says.

He needn’t have worried.

Turned out there were a dozen or so Hearts fans over from Edinburgh for a weekend in Belfast and a bonus of their trip was the chance to watch McEneff in action for his new side.

It was a nice reminder of the lasting impact the Derry native made in just over a year with the club, one which saw them earn promotion back to the top flight in 2021 and reach the Scottish Cup final the following season.

Those memories were bittersweet given Rangers came out on top in the showpiece, although it was McEneff’s goal off the substitutes’ bench against St Mirren that sent them to Hampden Park.

“I remember seeing all these green, white and orange beach balls with Hearts crests on them,” he says of that cup final.

Some close to him doubted whether a Catholic from Derry joining Hearts would go down well.

“But it couldn’t have been any better, the fans were great with me. It’s a fishbowl over there but they do anything for you.”

On one visit home to Derry, he headed for a well-known Celtic supporters’ pub in the city. A couple of weeks earlier, McEneff had scored a consolation goal against the Bhoys at Celtic Park.

“Some aul lad came from behind and wrapped a Celtic scarf around my head and said I ‘shouldn’t be playing for them (Hearts)’, but to be honest, I got more stick in Derry for joining [Shamrock] Rovers than I did anything else.”

McEneff and those Hearts supporters who came to Belfast didn’t just chat about good times, they also serenaded him with a rendition of the song that helped make him a cult hero at Tynecastle.

McEneff laughs as he begins to sing a version of Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky down the phone, one which ends with the following lines:

When they die and they lay me to rest

I’m gonna go on the piss with McEneff

A player will always find a way into supporters’ hearts when there is a tune they can all get behind.

Hearts are away to Celtic on Saturday, knowing that if they avoid defeat they will be crowned champions for the first time since 1960.

Celtic have won 13 of 14 Scottish titles and the last club outside the Old Firm to lift the trophy were Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen in 1985.

Hearts’ recent history also makes this story even more remarkable. McEneff joined the club in February 2021 when they were looking for promotion back to the top flight. He played his part in that success and immediately settled into the starting XI.

“After that, the aim was quickly about becoming one of the best teams in Scotland again,” McEneff says, although opportunities would become scarce and a move to Perth Glory was too hard to turn down within 12 months.

“But even in Australia there would be Hearts fans all over and they would always be so positive,” McEneff says.

The arrival of Brighton owner Tony Bloom as a minority partner with a €10 million investment in June 2025 understandably brought a new dimension to their operation through the use of the same Jamestown Analytics operation that has helped establish the Seagulls in the Premier League.

Shelbourne have also utilised it in the League of Ireland while Como have qualified for the Champions League through Serie A and Union Saint Gilloise remain in the hunt for a second Belgian title in a row after ending a 90-year wait last season.

At the heart of the club are the fans, though, and the Foundation of Hearts group retains a 75.1% controlling stake to ensure fan ownership.

It’s that spirit which was on show between McEneff and a small number in Belfast back in March, although things haven’t ended so well for all their Irish players in recent years.

Jake Mulraney can laugh about it now but, at the time, he was public enemy number one among some of the Hearts faithful.

“I got hundreds and hundreds of messages. I got absolute death,” the Dubliner recalls of an incident coming out for kick-off in an Edinburgh derby with Hibernian.

His crime?

“I forgot that I had my AirPods in when I went to the toilet in the dressing room, and when I ran out to join the rest of the lads for the start of the match, I still had them in. I got slaughtered for it.”

This was December 2019. Mulraney arrived a year earlier when he was 22 and the team were struggling.

This indiscretion, he explains, only happened because he had been listening to some final set-piece instructions before nature called. Sky Sports highlighted the misdemeanour and abuse followed, although he was used to it in that “intense” derby.

“I’m a godly man and the Hibs fans knew that. There would be some mad things that you’d hear,” Mulraney says, chuckling to himself as he gives a funny example that has stuck with him.

“I was on the side and I hear from one of their fans, ‘Oi, Mulraney, God is no’ even real, ye know’. What can you say back to that, like?”

Still, Hearts is the club that has had the most lasting impact on his faith, and Mulraney explains how their club chaplain, Andy Prime, played a key role in bringing him back to a traditional Christian church.

They met regularly at the training ground, and he also joined Prime in his parish in the city, where he also helped with drug outreach.

The day before Mulraney spoke to The 42, he also visited Oberstown Children Detention Campus in County Dublin to talk with some of the young people there.

The Shamrock Rovers winger is settled back home with his partner and kids. He left Hearts three weeks after the AirPods incident but only because the offer from Atlanta United in MLS was too good to turn down.

“We were looking at going back to Edinburgh and living there when I finished playing before coming to Dublin,” Mulraney explains. “It has such a positive impact and it’s hard to explain the feeling you get in the city, it’s a lovely place.”

Veteran goalkeeper Colin Doyle can vouch for that, even if it took a bit longer for him to get settled after initially being convinced by manager Craig Levein to join from Bradford City.

The Cork native would travel from West Yorkshire to Edinburgh at the crack of dawn on a Monday, stay until after training on Tuesday afternoon when he’d return to his family in England, and then head back to Scotland on Thursday mornings to prepare for the weekend’s game.

Most of the time the journey could be done in four hours, occasionally 30 minutes would be shaved off. Doyle was always at the mercy of traffic, so he was prepared to leave after a year.

Levein convinced him to bring his wife and two kids to Edinburgh by enticing him with a couple of more years on the contract offer. Always welcome for a player in their mid 30s.

It was a turbulent time. Doyle had been struggling with injury, he was assured it was merely bone bruising, but he then broke his ankle in late 2019 during training while jumping to collect a routine cross. The Covid pandemic struck a few months later and the SPFL suspended the league on 13 March 2020.

At the time, Hearts were four points adrift at the bottom of the table and relegation was confirmed on a points-per-game basis. A legal challenge from the club followed but was not successful.

Doyle also found himself out of favour with new manager Daniel Stendel after Levein was sacked. “I suppose when you put it like that and lay it all out what happened, it sounds like it was shit, but it didn’t feel like that. It really is a great club,” Doyle says.

Austin MacPhee, now set-piece coach for Aston Villa and assistant head coach to Roberto Martinez with Portugal, took over on an interim basis for a time and is someone Mulraney also speaks highly of. 

“He had a coldness about him that made you think he would go far in the game, but he was a good guy,” he says.

Doyle also retains a link to Derek McInnes, the man now in charge of Hearts, and who can cement his place in club lore by seeing off Celtic on Saturday.

He became goalkeeping coach at Kilmarnock when his playing days came to an end, and McInnes was one of the managers he worked under.

“It would be brilliant for Scottish football if they can do it, and they have a great person in charge. He’s a great manager too, really detailed and he has a way of really motivating players.

“It’s not necessarily with big speeches before a game or in the dressing room, but when we were going for promotion with Kilmarnock [in 2022] he would have lads hanging off every word in meetings before training. He’d have lads fired up and it was only training.”

There is now so much more on the line for Hearts, and there are at least three Irishmen in their corner for the ultimate underdog contest.