Hibs' hero of '73 toasts new breed

ALAN Gordon’s analytical eye is employed often enough in his day job as an accountant so he can be relied upon to offer an instructive opinion of the present Hibs team.

He also knows what it’s like to cope with the pressure of expectation, having helped exceed the wildest hopes of Hibs fans who turned up at Tynecastle Park 32 years ago, confident of a win but hardly expecting to witness what was to be a historic Edinburgh derby massacre.

Gordon, now 60, scored twice that day in a 7-0 win that is still as impossible to ignore at this time of year in the capital as the clumps of revellers clogging its thoroughfares. Even now Hibs fans don’t so much toast the year to come, but instead drink to the memory of 1973, when a great Hibs side grew greater still.

Tony Mowbray’s much-hyped Hibs team carry a similarly significant burden of expectation into 2005. The first test of their resolve is tomorrow, when Hearts arrive with nostrils flaring with envy. It wasn’t so long ago that they were the darlings being feted for injecting some interest into the SPL.

The hope for Hibs supporters is that their team is young enough to cast the weight of expectation from off their shoulders. The worry is that they are not, and will be kindled upon a bonfire of vanities, roasted by a Hearts team having little regard for the pretty patterns their rivals have been weaving from week to week this season.

Gordon, who grew up a Hearts fan and enjoyed two spells at the Tynecastle club, attends Easter Road now. This isn’t at the behest of Irvine Welsh, one of his clients and a noted celebrity Hibby. Nor does his son, Brian, whose impressionable early years coincided with watching his father take on the likes of Juventus in green and white, demand that he accompany him to games. The fact is that Gordon always felt more loved in Leith despite the comparatively brief time he spent there. Further ensuring it is Easter Road where he watches his football is the formation of the Hibs Former Players’ Association.

The Easter Road club donates complimentary tickets to returning heroes in return for their time after games, where they meet and mix with sponsors and guests.

Fair to say the craic this season has been good. Better, certainly, than last season, when the side’s undoubted promise was so often dashed on the rocks of a system of play that strangled rather than liberated a thrilling cast of young bucks.

"I saw them quite a lot last season too," Gordon explains. "I think, perhaps without them even knowing it, they learned a lot from last season. The talent was certainly there, but it wasn’t channelled in the right direction. Yet you could see they had promise. It was no accident that they got to the CIS Cup final."

And perhaps no accident that they lost it, either.

"It would have been a frustrating experience for the players last season," continues Gordon. "I am sure the message got through that they should and could have done a lot better. They were a year younger last season but to be honest I don’t know if Bobby Williamson was able to get the best out of them. I don’t think he was as deep a thinker as Tony Mowbray is. The team pattern has really developed in the last few games.

"I watched the match against Celtic at home - the 2-2 draw. I thought that was the best Hibs have played for a long, long time. That’s when I first nodded my head and thought: ‘that’s more like it’."

That’s more like Turnbull’s Tornadoes, perhaps. Eddie Turnbull’s exciting side won the League Cup in 1973 while also losing a further two finals to Celtic. It was the time of Gordon, Pat Stanton, John Brownlie and Jimmy O’Rourke, an era every Hibs incarnation since has been haunted by. Turnbull, now 81, this week suggested Mowbray’s side could challenge for the championship in two years’ time. Gordon is not drawn into making such a grand claim, but agrees with his old manager that right-back Steven Whittaker is a "John Brownlie in the making", while Ian Murray puts him in mind of Stanton.

Whether they can wreak the kind of damage Hibs did on New Year’s day, 1973, is another question. "I still have a video of that game," says Gordon. "It’s a long video because it’s only the highlights!

"I was at my peak then, in my late twenties," he continues. "That’s when I think players are at their best. That might be a consolation to those young fellows in the Hibs jersey now if times should get trying - they won’t be at their peak for another four or five years.

"I came to Easter Road and walked into a very good side," he continued. "The Hibs supporters were good to me in the short time I was there, and it was a short time."

Indeed, Gordon’s time with Hibs was bookended by spells with Dundee United and Dundee. He was among the first to experience Jim McLean’s cussed ways, when, just days after he took over as manager at Tannadice, Gordon was placed on the transfer list due to his refusal to move to Dundee. He maintained he had struck a deal with the club which allowed him to train two days a week while pursuing his career in accountancy in Edinburgh. McLean was not having any of this, however.

"I impressed upon him that my arrangement was with the club and not him as an individual," recalls Gordon. "He in turn simply put me on the transfer list!"

Having already left Hearts twice, he reasoned, probably accurately, that a return to Tynecastle was not on the cards. He instead stepped across the great Edinburgh divide. It was a move made less contentious by his spell at Tannadice, though even this three-year period in a tangerine shirt could not erase the fact Gordon had scored twice on the occasion of his first Edinburgh derby, for Hearts against Hibs.

That was a 4-1 win for Hearts in January 1962 and while the Tynecastle side were invariably in the hunt for honours at this time it was a period in Hearts’ history that was accompanied by a sense of loss: grief for the passing of that great team of the Fifties, while the agonising failure to capture the league title on goals average to Kilmarnock in 1965 also cast a spell.

"The Hearts fans had to endure a lot then, losing the league on the last day for one thing," he says. "It was a barren spell for the club which had known so much success in the Fifties. The fans were suffering, and, perhaps consequently, I didn’t have the same rapport with the fans at Tynecastle as I did at Easter Road."

He need only have scored that brace against Hearts on New Year’s day to establish himself in their affections for ever. But it isn’t what he should be remembered for. Players don’t end up partnering Gerd Muller in a World XI, as he did in a testimonial in 1973, for simply being legends in their own backyard. Gordon was leading the European goalscoring charts at the time. Not bad for an accountant from Edinburgh.