Hearts were broken again, but a season of such magnitude should be relished | Jonathan Wilson

Another final-day showdown, another final-day heartbreak. The pain may have been spread over 61 years, but that won’t make it any easier to bear for Hearts who, having been top for 250 days of the Scottish Premiership season, missed out on the title again.

There was, of course, a Celtic penalty for handball and a critical video assistant referee decision that went their way but, on this occasion, neither provided the controversy. That came instead from the confusion as the game was ended by a pitch invasion with 23 seconds plus whatever else the referee felt needed to be added to injury still to play.

Some incursions are largely joyous, forgivable as spontaneous eruptions of emotion but while that may have been true for the majority who spilled out of the stands, there were also many who confronted Hearts players. But even if the invasion had been purely celebratory, fans cannot be allowed to dictate when games finish.

For Martin O’Neill, the Celtic manager, this was a remarkable finale. At 74, he has his fourth Scottish title, and surely the most remarkable, achieved by winning the final eight games of the league season. That may become a double if Celtic can beat Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup final next week. But remarkable as the turnaround he enacted was, the story of Saturday and of this season was Hearts.

It will not feel so yet, or perhaps for several years, but in the end, almost more important than winning or losing, is simply that Hearts were involved, that they had a chance of winning 40 years after they went to Dundee on the final day needing a draw and lost 2-0 to a pair of Albert Kidd goals in the final seven minutes as Celtic took the title on goal difference.

This time they got even closer, just four minutes remaining when Daizen Maeda squeezed in the goal that put Celtic in front. Hearts had also lost it on the final day in 1965, when Kilmarnock beat them 2-0 at Tynecastle to take the title by 0.04 goal-difference.

Whatever the outcome, this was a day that was going to live forever in the history of the club. Everybody will have their tale, whether they were among the 752 making up the official allocation at Celtic Park, or among the many thousands packing the bars of Edinburgh’s Gorgie, or simply watching at home. They ended up being tales of sorrow and regret but having any tales of such magnitude should be relished; the worst thing in fandom is indifference.

There have been the breakout stories, those of fans who remember Hearts’ last league title, in 1960, experienced the two previous final-day agonies, and assumed they would never see their side even have a chance of winning the league again. The most notable, perhaps, has been the 73-year-old singer Colin Chisholm, who lost his parents in a car crash when he was 21 and has carried his father’s Hearts membership card in his pocket ever since. He has become a feature over the past few weeks, leading communal singalongs of the Hearts Song. Death and remembrance, the strands that link communities through the ages: that’s what days like Saturday are about.