Ten good men and true

AFTER this game our reporter proposed "a toast to the Hibernians" for a fighting 3-2 victory over St Mirren at Paisley, where they played for 78 minutes with ten men.

John Frye was carried off after 12 minutes with a severe foot injury but Hibs refused to fold under the handicap and a hat-trick by young centre-forward Joe Baker, as well as superb saves by Lawrie Leslie, made the pair heroes.

This was, after all, the era before substitutions were permitted.

The Easter Road side had a new full back partnership in John Grant and Muir, and in the forward line of Frye and Baker played insetad of Jimmy Harrower and Lawrie Reilly.

A confident St Mirren kicked off and, in the fifth minute, Leslie received a real warning. McCulloch cracked in a first-time shot and it was lucky for Hibs that Eddie Turnbull - the future architect of the "Tornadoes" side of the 1970s - turned it away with his head.

Then Frye was injured in a tackle and had to be carried off on a stretcher. The short-handed team, as is so often the case, really got down to it and Telfer was glad to be able to concede a corner with his head when a Gordon Smith cross had the defence on the wrong foot.

Smith went off on another of his brilliant runs and from this cross Willie Ormond, who would go on to become Scotland's manager at the 1974 World Cup finals, fired in a drive which Forsyth saved.

The Easter Road goalkeeper made two brilliant saves before McGill fired into the net for the equaliser, right on half-time.

But Hibs showed that they still had a sting, Baker having a couple of cracks at goal within a minute of the resumption.

St Mirren settled down to better football. They piled on the pressure and, in 52 minutes, took the lead. Neilson passed to Gemmell and the international reserve shot hard and low. The ball glanced off a Hibernian defender's leg and in off the far post.

In 60 minutes, however, hard-fighting Hibs equalised, and again it was Baker who scored.

Ormond lobbed the ball forward and, while the defence hesitated, the centre nipped in to lob the ball into the net over the advancing goalkeeper.

In another Hibernian breakaway in 76 minutes, that man Baker completed his magnificent hat-trick. This time Turnbull, away out on the right, crossed to perfection and the rising star headed the ball in.

Young Joe Baker certainly lived up to his growing reputation as a lively and scoring centre.