With the sun shining down on Tynecastle and the noise levels shaking the place to its foundations, Tony Bloom was determined to drink it all in.
Bloom was pictured in the main stand shortly after full-time.
Decked out in a maroon suit, singing along to the Hearts song, and filming the scenes of wild celebration on his mobile phone.
A couple of hours later, he had left the stadium and was in the Tynecastle Arms, the pub which is only a stone’s throw further up the street, having a pint with supporters and having pictures taken.
Bloom entered Scottish football with a clear and stated ambition of disrupting the natural order. By the close of play on Monday night, the revolution had reaped its richest victory.
Even in his wildest dreams, when Bloom made his investment of £10million in return for a 29-per-cent stake in Hearts last year, he could not have foreseen his prophecy being fulfilled quite so quickly.
Tony Bloom savours Hearts’ 2-1 victory over Rangers at Tynecastle on Monday
Hearts boss Derek McInnes is all smiles at the full-time whistle as Hearts inch closer to history
Hearts striker Lawrence Shankland celebrates his winner that fired Hearts three points clear
He laid out a ten-year plan to break the Old Firm duopoly in Scottish football. But the victory over Rangers felt like a landmark moment in the season.
With only three games left to play, and holding a three-point lead at the top of the table, the sense of hope and belief among Hearts supporters has now turned to one of expectation.
Hearts manager Derek McInnes touched on this in his post-match comments, saying: ‘I’m not here to get a pat on the back for good old Hearts putting up a fight. It’s way beyond that now. We’ve got to try and go and win it now.’
And he was right, too. Hearts cannot come this far, this deep into the season, and throw it all away. The sense of devastation would be too profound, too shattering.
This is the chance of a lifetime. If they can win their next two matches, away at Motherwell and at home to Falkirk, they could actually have it sewn up by the time they travel to Celtic Park on the final day.
With a three-point lead and a goal difference which is superior by five as things stand, it’s difficult to see how Hearts would squander that advantage over the course of 90 minutes at Parkhead.
In sport, we can all be guilty of indulging in hyperbole at times. But you cannot overstate the significance of what Hearts are doing at the moment. It is truly historic.
If they can go on and finish the job, the landscape of Scottish football would be altered irrevocably – and Bloom’s Jamestown project would be ignited with rocket fuel.
Beyond the obvious glory and euphoria of winning the club’s first league title in 66 years, as well as becoming the first non-Old Firm club to win it since 1985, the financial uplift would be massive.
Hearts would enter the Champions League qualifiers with fresh revenue streams and heightened commercial appeal. The Europa League would be the fallback.
For a club still rooted in fan ownership via the Foundation of Hearts, that money carries huge importance.
It would allow more shrewd squad strengthening without abandoning the analytics that shaped the path to get here in the first place.
The club would have access to a higher calibre of player and would have tangible evidence to show potential new recruits that they would be joining a winning project.
A project which has already seen Claudio Braga plucked from the Norwegian second division and crowned PFA Scotland Player of the Year 12 months later.
A project which has unearthed Alexandros Kyziridis from the Slovakian top flight, Harry Milne from Partick Thistle in the Championship.
Marc Leonard on loan from Birmingham. Oisin McEntee from Walsall. Alexander Schwolow from Union Berlin. The list could easily go on.
In the grand scheme of things, these players were signed for peanuts. Hearts have spent pennies in comparison to Rangers and Celtic.
Hearts currently run a wage bill just shy of £20m per year. Rangers sits around £58m, whilst Celtic’s tops the lot at £74m.
Bloom even went out for a post-match celebratory pint after Hearts’ win over Rangers
Winning the league would move the club into a different stratosphere financially. It would turbo-charge the Jamestown project.
Not only that, winning the title would also validate the entire Jamestown philosophy in the most spectacular way.
The use of data and analytics in football are often mocked. This would be irrefutable evidence of their value.
This will be Brighton’s model transplanted north of the border: identify, develop, profit, repeat.
Bloom’s approach has always transcended narrow economics. Those close to the project speak of his genuine enthusiasm for Hearts’ potential as a disruptor.
That was plain for all to see on Monday night. For all his wealth as a billionaire, he still retains a common touch. Pints and selfies with fans? No problem.
Yet, even visionaries need proof of concept. Delivering the championship would ignite everything: sponsorship interest, finance, and scouting reach.
It would make the next wave of Jamestown-identified talents even more eager to join a proven success story rather than a promising experiment.
But it would be wrong to conclude that everything Hearts have achieved this season has been based purely on data, analytics and good signings.
There is much more to it than that. For instance, Stuart Findlay was not a Jamestown signing.
After taking the job, McInnes knew he would have to embrace the new data-driven approach to recruitment.
But he asked Hearts to trust him and allow him one or two signings of his own. Findlay was one of them, with the pair having worked together at Kilmarnock.
Findlay has been magnificent this season and, along with the outstanding Craig Halkett, they have formed the best centre-back pairing in the league.
McInnes has embraced the data-led recruitment approach of Bloom’s Jamestown Analytics
What about McInnes himself? He is the man who has knitted it all together, instilled a belief in this squad that they can go all the way.
McInnes has been every bit as important to Hearts as the data and recruitment. Hearts did not over-complicate their search for a new manager last year.
McInnes was the outstanding candidate. They went out and got him. Sometimes the correct answer is the obvious one.
And to think that one prominent pundit in Scottish football stated a few weeks ago that McInnes ‘could be the biggest problem for Hearts in the run-in’? Oh dear.
Bloom stated last year that his objective was to win the league within 10 years. Even if that objective is ticked off at the first attempt, this will not be the end.
Far from it. Winning the league would only be the start, the catalyst that turns a clever investment into a revolution.
Bloom did not come to dabble. He came to build. If Hearts cross the line this season, the building work will accelerate into something formidable.
The analytics will sharpen, the recruitment will deepen, the ambition will broaden. Scottish football, long stuck in familiar patterns, may never be quite the same again.
