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The last time Hearts celebrated over league title

Hearts of Oak on 19th July, 2009 won their last major trophy

Exactly 7 years today, the Phobians edged relegated Sporting Mirren to clinch the 2009-09 Ghana Premier League at the Ohene Djan Sports Stadium.

Asante Kotoko, who had a bad first round rediscovered their form in the second round and gave Hearts of Oak a hot chase when the Accra giants were experiencing a dip in form. However, they threw in the towel when they realised that the application of the head rule was going disadvantage them in the race for the league title.

It was must win game for the Phobians and they lived up to that expectation with an early goal from the foot of Samuel Affum who pounced on a Francis Bossman's set up to fire past goalkeeper Muntari Tagoe in under one minute of the commencement of the game.

Hearts have thus won the League title with a total point build up of 52, leaving close contenders Kumasi Asante Kotoko with 49 points as they were held two all by city rivals King Faisal at the Baba Yara stadium to draw the curtain down on the League.

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Even though the goal brought the entire stadium to a standstill with a large army of the Phobians filling the stands to witness the crowning moment, it partly took the shine out of Hearts as the relegation bound team assumed some dominance of the game. Hearts exhibited a lot of faulty passes in the first quarter of the game, with Mirren who seemed to be well composed with swift inter-positional play, were however unable to make any accurate and meaningful penetration into the defence of the champions. The remaining 30 minutes of the half saw action from one side of the pitch to the other with the play makers of the two sides being the main characters.

Hearts' Tawrick Jibrile took on the defence of Mirren and had only keeper Tagoe to beat but a feeble shot was the end result in the 26th minute with Mirren's captain Frank Boateng also embarking on a similar adventure but had goalkeeper Philemon McCarthy to contend with in the 33rd minute.

The Phobians once again benefited from the exchanges when in a similar fashion, Affum whose role as the Club's striker had been widely criticized by the followers latched on a perfect pass from Jibrile to run through the defence of Mirren to score the second goal in the 36th minute to send the enthusiastic crowd into wild jubilation. With a comfortable 2-0 lead the Phobians from then were sure of the trophy with the Club faithful chanting praises in the remaining minutes of the half.

The second half saw a fairly balanced game, but it was Mirren who should have benefited in the 55th minute, when skipper Boateng took the Hearts defence on but he was unable to make good use of the opportunity, whilst a similar opportunity that fell the path of George Ankama was also blown off in the 68th minute to the relief of the Phobians. With Hearts seeking for another goal, Mirren also were desperately searching for the equalizer in an effort to reduce the score-line and when Ankamah was again given an opportunity he messed it up in the 75th minute.

Six minutes on, Boateng was on hand to reduce the tally, but saw his shot pushed to corner by keeper McCarthy, with the resultant kick wasted.

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Hearts in the dying minutes of the game made series of unsuccessful efforts to score and had to make do with the two goal margin which was enough to see them win the premiership at the end of the 90 minutes and sent most of the supporters clad in white and colours of the Clubs waving their white handkerchiefs amid singing and dancing to various music. 19 July 09

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