We were somewhere near Durham, I think. I wasn’t driving or I might remember more precisely, but we were certainly somewhere in the north of England, heading south. The return legs of the journeys always felt longer, our energy sapped by the early morning start, the long day, the beers and, in this case, a humiliating 4-0 home thumping by Dundee United, a result so unexpected that the new recruit who had pulled it out of the sweepstake had tossed his slip in the bin before the game. We’d failed even to achieve the silver lining of getting on to the 606 phone-in. We just wanted to get home.

And then, over the minibus radio, we heard the opening bars of Hey Jude and the mood changed. From the back of the minibus someone began to sing and within minutes we were all giving it laldy, belting out this Hearts favourite and swirling our scarves in unison. That was when I realised we had something to cherish. In the subdued gloom of that defeat in March 2007, our fledgling supporters’ club, York Hearts, came together and never looked back.

I had never envisaged joining a supporters’ club, let alone founding one. I’d been born and brought up in Edinburgh and we (my dad, uncle and I) drove to games, home or away. The Saturday routine was simple: play football in the morning, home for soup and rolls, then off to see Hearts. Then, spend the next week rehashing the same football conversations at school and poring over Ceefax for news.

I’m part of a fairly distinct generation of Hearts fans, too young to have endured the early 1980s and unscarred by the 1985-86 season, but old enough to have witnessed and savoured three Scottish Cup wins in 20 years. I was a Tynecastle regular before the 1980s were out and became increasingly obsessed thereafter. If I put my mind to it, I can still recite match dates, scores and scorers from countless games in the 1990s.

Then, after leaving school, I went to study in York, 210 miles away. I told myself I would return to Scotland after university, and sure enough I did, but I was lured back to York when a trainee reporting job came up on the local paper, the Evening Press. This was the worst possible time to be a long-distance Hearts fan. The 2005-06 season opened with eight wins in a row and brought fantastic attacking football, goals galore, credible title talk, a Scottish Cup and a place in the Champions League qualifiers.

Tynecastle was packed and yet – get this – nobody in York was talking about Hearts: not my friends, not my colleagues, not my housemates. It was almost like they didn’t care. When Hearts beat Rangers in late September, for their eighth successive win, I was chasing down a police story in Selby in North Yorkshire and not one person on the newsdesk thought to send back-up so I might get to the pub. I know.

True, the internet makes it easier to keep in contact with your fellow fans than in years gone by but forums and social media remain poor substitutes for proper pub chats about dodgy decisions, glorious goals and magical memories. This was the crux of it for us expats in York: a shared appreciation of fan camaraderie and of how vital it is to football.

Psychologists and social scientists have long recognised the importance of collective identity to human behaviour. A sense of belonging is a central feature in Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. A few years ago, researchers in Nottingham demonstrated that a person’s happiness can be increased greatly if they identify with a group that shares their values, interests and priorities, and which can also support them in a crisis. Throw in a couple of references to sweepstakes and pubs, and that pretty much epitomises a supporters’ club.

As the 2005-06 season unfolded amid a lack of interest around me, I knew I needed to find other Hearts fans in York, people who might share petrol money to go to games or meet up to commandeer a pub for televised matches. So I wrote a single sentence for the news in brief columns of the Evening Press, under the headline “Heart-felt appeal”. It read: “Heart of Midlothian supporters interested in joining a York Hearts Supporters Club should email yorkhearts@yahoo.co.uk.”

A few initial emails turned into a steady trickle and we had a dozen or so before the year was out. Yours truly, an aspiring journalist. Alan “Ninja” Hardie, a Hearts diehard from Lauder who worked in a brewery. Ian “Badger” Warner, an ex-member of Glasgow Hearts who had reached York via New York and Dublin. Tommy M, an ex-army man who had settled down here. Cliff, another ex-forces man who still attended most games and knew the East Coast train timetable inside out.

Brian, a car salesman who hadn’t been to Tynecastle for 29 years (he called it an unbeaten run) but who would become a regular once more. The other Brian, a student in York. Sammy and Tommy Outing, brothers who had lived in York almost all their lives. Graham Burnett and his son Adam, aka Bruno, our youngest recruit and often our seven-a-side team’s only hope. Jack, Terence, Karen and Doc Rob, a paramedic who lived in Hull and travelled over. A mixed bunch of people from all walks of life but all in the same boat, marooned in England.

And then there was Roy. We’d been going a few months when we got wind that Roy Kay, the 1970s Hearts full-back and 1980s York City captain, was living nearby. A tentative phone call followed (him bemused but persuaded; me delighted), and before we knew it we had a lifetime honorary president. He had not known such adulation since he opened the scoring in the famous 5-1 win over Lokomotiv Leipzig in the 1976 Cup Winners’ Cup.

Everything took off in the 2006-07 season. We launched membership, got a flag made, hired minibuses and found a pub to serve as our HQ. Any Scot in England, especially if they don’t support Celtic or Rangers, will know how tough it can be to persuade pubs to show Scottish football. Take heart from our experience: it was almost surreal to hear presumptive Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal fans being told “sorry, the Hearts game is on today”.

The road-trip routine also became established. Depart at 8am, first stop at Washington services, phone ahead to the butty van on the border for the second stop, park at Polwarth, Caley Sample Rooms, Ardmillan Hotel, game, Gorgie Fish Bar, petrol stop at Berwick, back to York for a couple of pints, and/or an ill-advised curry.

Hearts did their best to dampen our enthusiasm. After a few weeks, we had witnessed goalless draws in Mostar and Prague, along with 1-0 defeats at home to St Mirren and Aberdeen. Our sole Hearts goal during that time was in a 1-1 draw with Dunfermline, giving us a miles-to-goals ratio teetering around 5,500-to-one.

But we were in our element and found ourselves becoming renewed evangelists for Scottish football. Friends and workmates who had previously dismissed it came along to the pub or joined trips. Over a decade we introduced 37 English football fans to the SPL (and almost as many to the Gorgie Fish Bar’s magical spicy haggis supper, more than once the highlight of a trip).

We had a magnetic sign printed for the minibus, and although it flew off on the way to one match, we spotted it again on the way home that night, prompting a mad dash by the driver from the hard shoulder to the central reservation. We formed a seven-a-side team to compete in a local league, produced pin badges and made it on to the back page of the Edinburgh Evening News when our evidently flawed voting system led to Saulius Mikoliunas being named our player of the year. We held three St Andrew’s Night celebrations, raising thousands of pounds for charity.

Rudi Skacel celebrates after scoring for Hearts against Hibs in the Scottish Cup final in 2012. Photograph: Ian Walton/Getty Images

There have been unforgettable matchdays. There was the Inverness trip, an epic 22-station train ride one January that culminated in a 1-0 defeat and near frostbite. There was the time we forgot the tickets on derby day. I could wax lyrical about the 5-1 victory over Hibs in the 2012 Scottish Cup final, or dredge up the 2013 League Cup final, when the bus tyres blew out on the way home to compound the disappointment of a 3-2 defeat. But win or lose, I look back on those moments and realise that the supporters’ club, our club, has been the context for my football life for the past 12 years.

I remember as a student trying to follow Radio Scotland on the faintest of signals, sometimes struggling to make out whether a goal had gone for us or against us as the commentary crackled intermittently. I remember being the only Hearts fan amid dozens of Celtic fans in a pub and ill-advisedly yelling for a penalty. Countless pub landlords told me they couldn’t show the Scottish game because some lower-league English game was on instead.

But I also remember being in a pub full of Hearts fans in York as Craig Beattie’s last-minute penalty set up that all-Edinburgh 2012 Scottish Cup final. I remember trips to Tynecastle, Dunfermline, Hampden, Dumfries, Dundee, Prague, Stranraer, Motherwell, Mostar, Ibrox, Rotherham, Tottenham and more, and curry nights and Burns Suppers, and I realise that setting up a supporters’ club was one of the best things I ever did.

Twelve years after we started, our club is a little smaller. A few of the guys have left York or taken jobs that make weekend travel trickier. I now have three-year-old and five-month-old sons, meaning it’s less easy to get to the pub, let alone to Tynecastle or beyond – but the oldest is learning that, if daddy’s team wins a big game, we get Jam Tarts, so I’m winning hearts and minds there.

It’s natural to see football as being, above all, about your team and the results, but it’s also about who you celebrate or commiserate with, and how. Memories become a little less interwoven with the results and more entwined with the journey and the banter. Diehards will be diehards come what may, but football habits and loyalties can easily waver when you move away.

Among the 800,000 Scots in England, there must be clusters of fans living close to one another, perhaps obliviously. Dunfermline fans in Bradford, Motherwell fans in Birmingham, Falkirk fans in Norwich – who knows? All I know is that in our wee corner, we found new belonging, a new impetus to get to games and a renewed passion for our team, even – or perhaps especially – when we’ve just been thumped 4-0 at home.

• This article appeared first in Nutmeg magazine

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