When George Came to Edinburgh (eBook)

CHAPTER TWO

JOURNEYMEN

Being a Hibs fan has never been a job for the glory hunter. Founded in 1875 by the Irish community in Scotland’s capital, the club had lasted for 104 years before George Best arrived on the scene and in all those years, Hibs had won just seven major competitions: four League Championships, two Scottish Cups and one Scottish League Cup. It’s the type of record that leads fans to adopt a stoical attitude. A good sense of humour helps, too. Edinburgh-born war veteran John ‘Jock’ Wilson spent almost a century watching Hibs before his death in 2008, aged 105, and he knew better than most that following the Leith outfit requires a strong sense of self-deprecatory humour. Commenting on the Military Medal earned on active service, Jock would quip: ‘Well, I didn’t get it for following Hibs for 90 years – that would deserve the Victoria Cross.’ The comedian Bill Barclay, who was born and raised in Leith and has been a Hibee all his life, once joked: ‘I remember the last time we were in Europe, the fans let us down coming back on the ferry. They pulled down all the sails and threw the canons over the side.’

But the gallows humour and bare statistics don’t tell the whole story. For all their occasional spells of mediocrity, Hibs have frequently had a reputation for innovation and for playing free-flowing expressive football. In the decade following the end of the Second World War, they won three league titles. Back then, their forward line – nicknamed The Famous Five – were a wonder to behold. Bobby Johnstone, Willie Ormond, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Gordon Smith were feared and respected throughout Europe. Fast-forward 20 years and Eddie Turnbull as manager at Easter Road put together another mighty side. Known as Turnbull’s Tornadoes, Hibs in the 1970s were a team laced with entertainers, and names like John Brownlie, Pat Stanton, Alex Cropley, Alex Edwards, Alan Gordon and Jimmy O’Rourke are still revered down Leith way. Stanton in particular was a class act. Simon Pia, who has written a couple of great books about Hibs, told me: ‘For most fans of my generation, there can only be one man – Patrick Gordon Stanton. A great tackler and passer of the ball, Pat was also a goalscorer and particularly good in the air. He played with elegance, with his head up and always seemed to have so much time, reading the game so well.’

Stanton’s Hibs triumphed twice in the now defunct Drybrough Cup and also won the League Cup once with a stirring 2–1 win over Celtic in season 1972–73. That victory was the Tornadoes’ finest performance, with Pat Stanton providing a peerless display, outshining a Celtic side that contained legendary names like Danny McGrain, Kenny Dalglish and Jimmy Johnstone. The Tornadoes also reached the Scottish Cup final in 1972 and had some memorable nights in Europe throughout the 1970s. A good deal of the credit for the team’s success must go to their manager, Eddie Turnbull. As Jackie McNamara, who came to Easter Road in an unpopular swap deal which saw Pat Stanton go to Celtic, recalls: ‘As a manager, Eddie Turnbull was second to none. He’s the best I ever worked under. I don’t like to draw comparisons with [Jock] Stein because I worked with Big Jock near the end of his career and in a way he had already done it all, maybe the hunger wasn’t really there for him anymore. Turnbull would put you into a situation in training and 99 times out of 100 when you played on a Saturday that training situation would help you deal with the real thing during the match. He could be a hard man, but I was a bit of a favourite of his because of all the stick he got when he signed me. But Pat Stanton ended up retiring the season that he signed for Celtic and Turnbull got another ten years out of me.’

By the end of the 1970s, the great Hibs team had mostly gone their separate ways, lured from Edinburgh by the prospect of higher wages and more regular success on the field. John Brownlie and John Blackley had headed to Newcastle, Blackley for £100,000 and Brownlie leaving as part of the deal which took Ralph Callachan to Easter Road. O’Rourke, Gordon and Edwards had also moved on and even promising youngsters like Bobby Smith – who was sold to Leicester City – were also being shipped out of Leith. What was left was a shadow of the early 1970s outfit. Part-time chiropodist Arthur Duncan was one of the few remaining from the great side, but even he had reverted from being a buccaneering winger to a fullback with licence to overlap.

Arthur Duncan. Copyright unknown

Ian Wood, who has worked at The Scotsman for 40 years, was a regular in the Easter Road press box back in the 1970s and remembers that one signing in particular seemed to set Hibs back.

‘Eddie Turnbull had built a tremendous side but for some reason or other, I never found out why, they started to change that team. It all started to go wrong when they signed Joe Harper from Everton. I’m not blaming Joe, he had some good performances for Hibs, but after he signed the morale of the team went through the floor. I think they dropped Alan Gordon to make way for Joe, even though Alan was an integral part of that team, scoring lots of goals – he had been in the running for the European Golden Boot award. That side was never quite the same again and by 1979 they were a shadow of their former selves; in terms of the great Hibs teams of the past, they were sub-standard.’

Stanton’s departure for Celtic was the bitterest pill for Hibs fans to swallow and Jackie McNamara learnt pretty quickly just how fickle the Hibs fans could be. But having being born in Possilpark and raised in Easterhouse, two of Glasgow’s most notorious schemes, Jackie took it all in his stride.

‘Coming to Hibs initially was very difficult for me, especially as I didn’t know I was getting swapped for another human being, like going back to the slave trade days. It was all hush-hush; I had been in to see Jock Stein in the Celtic Park boardroom and had signed for Hibs. When I walked out, I saw Pat Stanton waiting to go in with his old teammate, Alan Gordon, who was his agent. I just thought, ‘‘what’s going on here?’’

‘At the time I was more or less on the scrap heap, I had my cruciate ligament hanging by a thread and Big Jock was glad to get rid of me and get Pat in. Fortunately for me, Hibs didn’t pump me with cortisone like Celtic had done. The first few games I played for Hibs, the fans were booing me every time I went near the ball. In fact, the booing actually started before I arrived. The day I signed, Celtic were playing Dundee United and I was advised by Big Jock to go through and see my new team, but I said, ‘‘no, I’ve been here five years so I want to say goodbye to my mates here’’. That same night, Hibs were playing Montrose and the fans were booing all the time because they heard Stanton was going.

‘I got injured after about ten games with Hibs and they got me an operation which kept me out of circulation for a good six months. When I came back, it was like Hibs were getting a new player and all the booing stopped, people started saying ‘‘ah, he’s no as bad as we thought he was’’. These first games weren’t easy though – you have to be thick-skinned to get through it, but I had been through all the political stuff at Celtic, condemning the bigotry and all that nonsense.’

Long after leaving Easter Road, George Best was less than complimentary about the standard of the Hibs team he played with, dismissing them as ‘a poor side, with no decent players’. In truth, they may not have had the class of Bobby Charlton or Denis Law, but Best’s judgement was very harsh. In the season prior to his arrival, Hibs had only narrowly missed out on qualifying for Europe and also managed to reach the Scottish Cup final.

On the way to Hampden, Hibs had beaten Hearts 2–1 at Tynecastle in the quarter-final and then edged out Aberdeen by the same score in the semi-final. Subsequently, though, they went off the boil and even took a 6–1 hammering from Partick Thistle in a league game. So in the final they were underdogs against a Rangers team on the rise: packed with experience and with two outstanding youngsters in Bobby Russell and Davie Cooper. It ended up 0–0: a dull game in which, as The Scotsman commented, ‘not much happened with continued regularity’. Hibs might have snatched a win in the dying minutes, though, when Hebridean striker Colin Campbell gathered a through ball from Ally MacLeod and thumped a swerving drive which Peter McLoy in the Rangers goal did superbly well to deflect wide. Campbell was also denied a penalty with just minutes to go when he knocked the ball past McLoy only to be brought down. But in fairness, Rangers had their own chances and Derek Parlane could have won it for the Glasgow men in 69 minutes when he hit the underside of the crossbar.

More than 50,000 watched the first game, but the replay only drew less than 33,000. Those who stayed away made the wise choice and by the end of the second 0–0 game even the most diehard Hibs and Rangers fans were losing the will to live. One press box observer said that the final – played out in dismal weather conditions – was beginning to rival Gone with the Wind as the longest-running entertainment in living memory. Still, Hibs had their chances and finished the stronger side, with Higgins, Bremner, MacLeod and Rae all missing good opportunities. Eventually, a second replay 12 days later at Hampden saw the deadlock broken. This time, Hibs grabbed two goals through Tony Higgins (the first goal of the final scored after 226 minutes of play) and Ally MacLeod, but in the end an Arthur Duncan...