Gordon Smith

Published on Friday 13 August 2004 02:54

THE date was Monday, 15 September, 1952. The place, Easter Road stadium on the traditional Edinburgh September Monday Holiday.

A date neither I nor the many other fans who witnessed Hibs right-wing legend Gordon Smith’s testimonial match on that Monday evening 52 years ago will ever forget.

Hibs, inspired by the "Gay" Gordon at his most illustrious, defeated English league champions Manchester United by 7-2. Nor was this game as one-sided as the five-goal margin suggests.

How could it be? When the Old Trafford side fielded players like Johnny Carey, an Irish internationalist, and English internationals Johnny Aston and Jack Roley.

But what separated the teams on that occasion was the man in Hibs’ No7 jersey whose scintillating runs down the wing just two days previously had provided the ammunition to his fellow "Famous Five" team-mates, Bobby Johnstone, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Willie Ormond, to stick six goals past the hero against England at Wembley in 1949, the Morton goalkeeper, Jimmy Cowan.

So it was in his testimonial match against Manchester United when my dad and I and thousands of other fans whooped with delight and awe as Smith went on his mazy touchline runs, scoring once while Turnbull hit the hat-trick.

Scoring feats matched by a brace of goals by Reilly and another goal by Hibees left-winger Ormond.

Then there was the thrill in those pre-mass television ownership days of 1955 of reading ecstatic press reports about Smith’s inspirational play while captaining Scotland when they defeated Austria by 4-1, with Smith notching one of the Scots goals.

However, there was also what, in my opinion, was Gordon Smith’s greatest performance against city rivals Hearts - at Tynecastle in October 1957 - when Hibs hanselled the then brand new floodlights at the Gorgie Road stadium.

A popular taunt of the Tynecastle faithful in the 1950s was that Gordon Smith could never play well against Hearts’ left-back, Tam McKenzie.

However, in October 1957 McKenzie was not available, and Gordon Smith - unshackled from his erstwhile maroon-clad nemesis, McKenzie - gave the Hearts left-back substitute, Billy Lindores, a nightmare of a time.

He beat the Hearts back time and time again while providing ammunition for another budding Hibs legend, the centre-forward Joe Baker, to score his first goal as a senior player at Tynecastle, as a Smith-inspired Hibs defeated their capital rivals 4-2.

Ironically, Lindores left Tynecastle on a free transfer virtually at the same time in 1959 that his multi-talented tormentor of October 1957, Gordon Smith, joined Hearts, also on a free transfer.

And there were so many other memorable matches which Smith enhanced, inspiring devotion among the Hibs faithful like myself and also his own team-mates.

The poet William Wordsworth famously hailed the French Revolution by writing: "Bliss it was to be alive at the dawning of that day."

His were identical sentiments to those experienced by Hibernian fans of my generation, who can still recall the communal frisson of sheer delight felt when the pre-match Easter Road loudspeaker announcer informed us that Smith would be filling the Hibernian right-wing spot on that particular match-day.

BRIAN DONALD

Taken from the Scotsman