Instead of the promised investment in a "new tomorrow" at Easter Road, they found their -cash circulating at the centre of a series of deals which brought control of the club on the cheap to -businessmen based in Monte Carlo and the West of England. These deals, far from restoring the club's fortunes, now appear likely to result in the end of 115 years of football in green and white.

Yesterday's announcement of a deal to sell the 29.9 per cent stake in the club held by the financier David Rowlands could be the last act in a tragedy which began when the current Hibs chairman, David Duff, acquired control of the club from the Edinburgh bookmaker, Kenny Waugh, with just £99,000 of his own cash and £800,000 of borrowed money in 1987.

That loan was in effect repaid by the fans when they bought into the proud prospects unveiled in the flotation prospectus issued in October 1988, which offered them "an opportunity to share in Hibernian’s future".

But the anger of fans, who have seen their investment crumble and the future of the club itself come under threat, is now only matched by that of Duff, who found himself at the centre of an ambush carefully laid by Rowlands - the man whose loan made possible the whole venture.

That was also the first indication to them that the financial storm clouds gathering around both Edinburgh Hibernian and Rowlands's property empire were about to begin the process of ending his involvement with the club. In March, Rowlands's property company Inoco which holds his shares in Hibs, plunged into the red with a full year loss of £2.6 million, thanks to the impact of high interest rates on its borrowings of £65 million.

That financial strain is also being felt at Hibs where latest estimates yesterday were that debts now stand at around £6 million, £1.5 million more than previously estimated.

The link between Hibs and Rowlands began a year before the 1988 flotation, when Duff announced he had bought the club.

Duff was unable himself to raise the cash required, and turned to Rowlands, who provided the £800,000 loan.

Instead, more than half the £2 million raised by the flotation went to pay off loans, notably to Monaco, the Dutch-registered company controlled by David Rowlands.

As part of the deal between Duff and Rowlands, 30 per cent of the shares in the newly floated Edinburgh Hibernian plc were allocated, free, to Monaco.

Subsequently the stake was split, with a 15 per cent personal stake being sold by Rowlands in a deal which netted him a profit of £1.5 million- The remaining 15 per cent was held through Inoco, and in January this year Rowlands increased Inoco's stake again with the purchase of 1.5 million Hibs shares at a cost of around £500,000.

But the commercial fortunes of Hibs after the flotation suffered when the club engaged in a series of property deals. Instead of injecting substantial sums of new cash into football, a large proportion of Hibs' cash went to Inoco as a result of the purchase of Avon Inns. Avon, a West of England hotel and pub company which had been in receivership, was bought for £5.6 million, the largest of a number of purchases, the value of which remains unclear.

Hearts are certainly not impressed. If the takeover goes ahead they will be sold.

The army of supporters who rushed to buy the shares paid 55p each at the time of the flotation. But by the end of the year they had begun to slide, and have not been above 35p this year. At one stage they fell as low as 18p, and on Friday, before the bid was launched, they stood at just 20.5p.

The whole saga of the Hibs flotation also raises important questions about the ethics of floating companies on the third market, as Hibs was. The third market is intended for smaller companies which are often a risky investment But in this case the shares were specifically aimed at football fans, who by definition are an unsophisticated market.

Rowlands himself has been a controversial figure in the

The son of a scrap metal dealer in South London, he left school to join a surveyors office, but by 23 he had become a millionaire, creating a substantial property company, Fordham Group.

But two years later Rowlands sold out of that group for £2.8 million. Only months after that sale, the company which bought his Fordham stake, International Securities, announced a loss of £1.13 million, much of which, it said, was attributable to the deal.

Rowlands's subsequent career was punctuated by further misadventures, in a number of which heavy borrowings proved his undoing. Then, as now. his game plan was clobbered by rising interest rates.

In the next round of deals his main vehicle was Williams Hudson. an obscure wharfing company which he built into a wide ranging conglomerate, but which suffered a series of problems and by 1982 was bankrupt, with debts of more than £25 million.

He bought the paper and timber company, Venesta, which by the end of the 1970s also had to be liquidated. The receivers' report criticised the way the company had over-borrowed to finance overseas adventures.

His current public vehicle is Inoco, which when he bought it was a UK oil company with a full stock exchange quote. Operating from his home base in Monte Carlo, Rowlands gained control of Inoco with a 48.5 per cent stake acquired through his Dutch-registered company Monaco, the company through which the loan to buy Hibs was arranged.

Inoco's interests were shifted into property and the full stock exchange listing abandoned in favour of a quote on the less highly regulated unlisted securities market.

The shares in Edinburgh Hibernian PLC are listed in Inoco's accounts as a 'trading investment'.

As Wallace Mercer said '"There has effectively been a for sale sign on that stock for some time."

Hibs shareholders will now be hoping that other people have also read those signs, and that an independent and profitable future for their club can become a realistic possibility.