Match Pictures | Matches: 1956 – 1957 | 1956-1957 Pictures
Trivia
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Scottish Cup Final
- Celtic’s third-in-a-row appearance as Scottish Cup finalist.
- Celtic had had a busy run in to the final with games on the 7th, 10th, 13th and 16th April prior to the Final. They were also sporting a large injury and recovering list with John Higgins having played one game but clearly not ready to return from his knee injuries, Bobby Collins desperately trying to recover from a knee ligament injury, Stein out for much of the season with ankle and groin injuries, Dick Beattie picking up a shoulder injury in the friendly against Manchester Utd, Fallon having only just come back from injury and Tully also having picked up a leg knock in that game. Hearts too were not without their problems but these were nowhere as severe as the injuries that Alec Dowdells, the Celtic trainer, was having to fight to ready. In fact Hearts in the end went to Hampden able to select their strongest side with Conn, Bauld and Wardhaugh recovering from knocks.
- Billy Craig a surprise starter, in what was described in the book “Alphabet of the Celts” to be in a bizarre team selection.
- James Sharkey said to not have been named in the team which lost in the final to Hearts after he was reported to have been drinking sherry in the company of Charlie Tully while at Seamill in the build-up to the game. Jim was furious at the decision and made sure that chairman Bob Kelly and the board knew his feelings:
“We went to Ferrari’s after the game. I don’t drink a lot but I was really upset for being dropped. That night I did have one or two too many so I thought I’d tell the manager what I thought about it. I wasn’t very happy. I walked up to the top table and told Mr Kelly and Mr McGrory that I would have played for their team for nothing but that now they could stick it up their bum, Mr Kelly in particular. And I walked away.” (from “Talking with Celtic”).He apologised afterwards a few days later
- Peter Goldie has said that was to play in the 1956 Scottish Cup final on the Thursday, only to find out on the day of the game that he was being dropped, and there were no subs then in those days to even allow him at least that consolation place.
- In an all-ticket match, Cup tickets had been snapped up immediately on determination that Hearts would provide the opposition at Hampden and queues of several thousand had gathered in both Edinburgh and Glasgow when the British Railways allocation of tickets suddenly became available. In a last minute desperate rush for tickets, the last remaining were put up for sale at Glasgow Central station. The queue started at 6 am and by 9am was over a 100 yards long with the last 1600 tickets coming over from Edinburgh at 10:30. Tickets were sold on a one-for-one basis to the fans who had queued.
Review
Even given the list of injuries that Celtic had this was still a bizarre team selection and smacked of desperation on behalf of the Celtic board and manager and can be the only reason for playing players with a predominant left side skill on the right or out of position and the sheer desperation of playing Mike Haughney at inside right.
Celtic lost the toss and kicked off facing both the wind and sun in the first half.Hearts had the best of the opening play and it was not until 13 minutes gone that Celtic managed a shot on target which was deflected away for a corner. From a quarter of an hour gone they began to regain some composure and it was as they were feeling more confident that Hearts scored the first. Evans slipped when tackling Bauld and the ball escaped to Crawford who fired a first time shot from 19 yards past Beattie. Celtic put pressure on Hearts who became anxious but the pressure came to very little the nearer it got to goal and shots were off target.
The second half started fairly evenly with Celtic just getting the breaks. But once again progress was halted by a Hearts goal. Bauld beat Evans and sent a good cross over which was touched on by Young to Crawford who finished. Celtic then got a break as a Tully free kick should have been easily collected by Duff in the Hearts goal. However he muffed his catch under challenge by Haughney and the erstwhile full back – come inside forward pushed the ball home when Duff dropped it. There followed a tense period with Hearts jittery and Celtic massing to find an opening in the Hearts defensive line. And in a break Hearts won a free kick, Cumming lobbed the ball into the area and it was met by Conn who hammered the ball into the top left corner.
In the end Hearts deserved their win though they realised that they should have put more pressure on Celtic in the first half when they had had wind and sun advantage. Celtic failed to trouble the Hearts goal enough and key performers in Evans and Fernie had off-games.
Quotes
Freddie Glidden, who was the last surviving member of the Hearts Scottish Cup winning team of 1956 defeating Celtic 3-1 on 21 April, in front of a crowd of 132,840, passed away, aged 91 in 2018:
“At the time when the final whistle went we all just seemed to relax,” he said as he recounted that day. “I think we all just thought ‘thank goodness’, but after that you see the supporters and it lets you see how much it means to the Edinburgh folk.
“It was lovely going up to get the cup and lifting it up but it could have been any of our boys, I was just the one who was at the front. To be honest, I think I was only made captain because I was the centre-half! We had great players in our team at that time. It was an amazing feeling but at the time you are so hyped up for that one game, and having won it you don’t really think of it as history, it’s only when you look back on it.”
Teams
Hearts:
Duff; Kirk, McKenzie; Mackay, Glidden, Cumming; Young, Conn, Bauld, Wardhaugh, Crawford.
Scorers: Crawford 2 (19, 49), Conn (81)
Celtic:
Beattie; Meechan, Fallon; Smith, Evans, Peacock; Craig, Haughney, Mochan, Fernie, Tully.
Scorers: Haughney (53)
Referee: R H Davidson (Airdrie)
Attendance: 132,842
Articles
- Match Report (see end of page below)
Pictures
Hearts’ Scottish Cup hero Freddie Glidden dies, aged 91
Freddie Glidden and Celtic captain Bobby Evans shake hands before the 1956 Scottish Cup final. Picture: TSPL.
Freddie Glidden and Celtic captain Bobby Evans shake hands before the 1956 Scottish Cup final. Picture: TSPL.
Moira Gordon
Published: 22:41 Wednesday 02 January 2019
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/competitions/scottish-cup/hearts-scottish-cup-hero-freddie-glidden-dies-aged-91-1-4851214
Freddie Glidden, who was the last surviving member of the Hearts Scottish Cup winning team of 1956, has passed away, aged 91. But the man who captained the side that defeated Celtic 3-1 on 21 April, in front of a crowd of 132,840, contributed too much to Hearts to ever be forgotten.
A member of the Hearts Hall of Fame, along with his manager Tommy Walker, pictured below right, and several of his team-mates from that notable era, Glidden described the Scottish Cup triumph as the sweetest of his career, despite also claiming two League Cup winners’ medals – in 1954 and 1958 – and the 1957-58 League Championship.
He was also a member of the first team to represent Hearts in Europe.
But he still combined all those on-field heroics with a “real” job, working for the West Lothian Water Board at the time, and would often sign up for a Friday nightshift to ensure he was free to play on Saturdays or would work until lunchtime on the day of a game before meeting up with his team-mates. Speaking ahead of the 2012 Scottish Cup final, he conceded he couldn’t remember if he had worked through the night ahead of that 1956 trip to Hampden but said he may well have done. That was just the way it was.
It did not stop him producing the goods on a day that would earn its own chapter in the club’s annuls and spawn the kind of memories that were able to prompt smiles and anecdotes as he perused a personal scrapbook more than half a century later.
Recalling the relief he felt at the final whistle as clearly as the crowds of Hearts and even Hibs fans who lined the streets as the team took an open-topped bus trip back through the city on their return to the capital, he flicked through photos, newspaper cuttings and telegrams, and among the medals and various other mementoes was evidence of the “66 pound, three and fourpence” payment he received from the club for ending the Scottish Cup five-decade-long drought. It was a hefty jump from the usual £2 win bonus.
But pride of place was the shirt he wore the day he climbed those Hampden steps to lift the trophy.
A tall, strong, intelligent defender, who had a real presence and could play at right-half or centre-half, he was a gentleman on and off the pitch but he was also a fiercely determined, hard-working competitor, who is said to have attacked every ball in a fearless manner. That won him adulation from the terraces, and the respect of colleagues.
It also prompted a light-hearted exchange back in 2012 when his wife Rosa claimed she had been too scared to wash that cup final shirt. It was a notion pooh-poohed by Glidden who said he had “never come off a football pitch with my strip that clean!”
A man who played a pivotal role in the Tynecastle club’s history and some of their most memorable honours, he humbly claimed that his role had been a simple one.
In a team blessed with players such as Willie Bauld, Alfie Conn and Jimmy Wardhaugh, he said that the men behind them “just went out to stop the other team, win the headers and the tackles and then get the ball to them. They did the rest. They could score goals anywhere. I was actually very fortunate to play with the players in that team. I was the captain but we were really a team.”
Glidden had been born at Newmains in Lanarkshire on 7 September 1927, but he was brought up in Stoneyburn, West Lothian. That is where he first came to Hearts’ notice, playing in the juvenile grade for local side, Murrayfield Rovers. Freddie was provisionally signed by Hearts in July 1945, but spells with West Calder Home Guard XI, Whitburn Juniors and then Newtongrange Star followed, before he was called up to the Hearts’ squad by manager Davie McLean in May 1948. He had to wait until 1951, though, for his first-team breakthrough.
It was worth the wait as he went on to make 270 appearances and score three goals for the Gorgie club, before he moved on and saw out his career at Dumbarton from 1959-1962 before ending his working life as a sub-postmaster. But it was throughout that spell at Hearts that he collected the medals and memories he would treasure. The most precious of all being that Scottish Cup final victory that ended a 50-year wait.
Ryan McGowan celebrates as Hearts defeat Celtic in the Scottish Cup semi final in 2012.
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“At the time when the final whistle went we all just seemed to relax,” he said as he recounted that day. “I think we all just thought ‘thank goodness’, but after that you see the supporters and it lets you see how much it means to the Edinburgh folk.
“It was lovely going up to get the cup and lifting it up but it could have been any of our boys, I was just the one who was at the front. To be honest, I think I was only made captain because I was the centre-half! We had great players in our team at that time. It was an amazing feeling but at the time you are so hyped up for that one game, and having won it you don’t really think of it as history, it’s only when you look back on it.”
Having passed away on New Year’s Day, family, friends and fans will mourn a wonderful man but all will look back fondly on a life well lived and a footballing contribution that will always be remembered.
