Edinburgh Select v Newcastle United, 1 August 1959

[the hibLOG]

Anybody have any lineups for this match? Edinburgh won 4-3, played at Easter Road, nice picture of the programme on the London Hearts site, but can't find anything about who played...

[kiwiscot]

I have the match programme and according to it, the teams chosen were ,Edinburgh Marshall (Hearts ) Grant, McLelland, Preston, Plenderleith (all Hibs ) Cumming ( Hearts ) Scott ( Hibs ) Murray, Bauld (Captain )Wardhaugh ( all Hearts ) & Ormond (Hibs ) Newcastle Harvey, Keith & Mc Michael , Scoular Stokoe & Mitchell, Taylor , Eastham , White Allchurch & McGuigan. Ref was Tiny Wharton but dont have any goalscorers for the match or attendance. As you know things can change from when programme was printed to the actual match line-ups. I also have the following programmes 1951 V Liverpool, 52 V Portsmouth, 54 V Bolton, 56 VBirmingham City, 57 V Preston ,58 V Liverpool & 62 V Burnley.

[the hibLOG]

Thanks Kiwi - hell, I could just have shouted ove the Cook Strait instead of bouncing messages off the other side of the planet

This picture of the match shows that the crowd must have been in the 40-50,000 range:

[kiwiscot]

I reckon your crowd guestimate about right, biggest crowd I was at at ER was the 1973 Scottish Cup replay with Rangers around the 50000 mark which during a British Rail strike was an amazing figure. looking at that massive terracing again makes one nostalgic , especially in the week Hibs announce they are building the new east stand, which should cap Easter Road off quite nicely, as the East Enclosure like the shed/Centenary stand at Ibrox or The Jungle/seated enclosure at Parkhead never captured the atmosphere of previous era's.

[the hibLOG]

Yes it was a discussion about the East Terrace that produced that photo, hence the question. In the late 50s there was a suggestion that the terracing on the other two ends of Easter Road could be enlarged to match the East given the relative frequency of crowds in excess of 40,000 and occasional 50,000 gate. What a white elephant that would have been.

[cskasofia]

When did crowds of this size stop happening in Edinburgh? Can remember reading somewhere that in the 50's Edinburgh derbies were better attended than Old Firm games. Why did the Old Firm go on and dominate the league, and hence get better attendances.

Can remember some shocking attendances for the Edinburgh clubs in the late 70's early 80's. Having said that I was at a CelticvMorton game round about 84, Celtic were still in contention, and there was less than 10,000

[the hibLOG]

Davy has a handy table of max/min/average crowds in Edinburgh down the years here: http://www.londonhearts.com/scores/misc/hhhlcrowds.html

As you can see, Easter Road only exceeded 60,000 in three seasons - probably only in three games, the last being in 55-56. Last 50,000+ crowd was in 59-60. The last 40,000+ crowd was the aforementioned 73-74 season and the last 30,000+ was only a couple of seasons later. Declining safety limits on crowds would have had some part to play in that, but the trend was general. Would be interesting to see Old Firm stats similarly tabulated.

As you say, some of the lows in the late 70s-early 80s are horrific. So was the football.