Hearts Tynecastle Stadium to lose capacity

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The home ground of the Premier League club will soon be able to host European matches again with work having started on making the pitch UEFA compliant. The project, which involves removing a row of seats from each of the Roseburn and Gorgie stands, will see the stadium meet the minimum criteria of 100 meters x 64 meters which is required to host European matches.

280 seats are to be removed, reducing Tynecastle's capacity for next season to around the 17,400 mark. The recent switch at the close of last season to the home of the Scottish Rugby Union proved a big success with more than 70,000 supporters attending matches, far in excess of what Tynecastle could ever have accommodated.

The development is in stark contrast to the stance taken by former chief executive Chris Robinson who, in his wide- ranging "Not Fit For Purpose" document of some 18 months ago, insisted it wasn't possible to create the minimum pitch size without incurring prohibitive costs. He used this claim as the central argument to the controversial proposal to sell Tynecastle and ground share with the SRU, something which new owner Vladimir Romanov overturned on buying out Robinson.