The old black and white photograph on the main page of this blog is of Tynecastle Park, home of the glorious Heart of Midlothian, Edinburgh's finest football club, taken in the 1950s. For those of you who read Adullamite's excellent prose, he actually appears in this photo, third from the front with the flat cap and scarf...The photo in this post is of Hearts with the Scottish Cup in 1956. Anyone of the Hibernian persuasion who doesn't know what this is, drop me an e-mail and I'll try to explain...
Before the auld fella retaliates, those days were before my time, being a child of the 1960s. But one of the many interesting aspects of this photograph is the number of smiling faces. Times were hard in post war Britain (as Adullamite will no doubt concur) but there seemed to be more of a community spirit then and a sense of knowing life was tough but just getting on with it. Going to the football was a welcome release from the travails of everyday life and in those less complicated times if you wanted to go and watch the finest team in Scotland - as Hearts were in the 1950s - you just headed for Gorgie on the tram, handed over your pennies and you stood on the terracing to enjoy the skills of some of the finest football players this country has ever produced. Compare that to now.
Hearts will face Dinamo Zagreb in the Europa League play-off round in a couple of weeks with the second leg due to be played at Tynecastle on 24 August. Tynecastle no longer has open terraces with the option of just turning up just before kick-off. Now you have to purchase a ticket for the all-seated 'stadium' (the name Tynecastle Park has been confined to the history books) with the top prices for the game against the Croatians being a whopping £32. I may be wrong here but I suspect £32 may have got you into several years worth of games at Tynecastle less than fifty years ago. And technology is such now that the old season ticket books - where you tore off your ticket for each game from a small booklet - have been replaced with something called a smartcard. I got my small piece of plastic the other week and shall attempt to use it for the first time today when I visit the old ground to watch Hearts pre-season friendly with Sunderland. Knowing Hearts history with such 'innovations' I fully expect it not to work...
Such technology is a sign of our times. Those not going to the game today can keep up with events minute by minute through the internet, mobile phone and Twitter updates - if you asked anyone in the aforementioned black and white photograph if they were on Twitter there would be a fair chance you would be carted away by men in white coats...
Such technology isn't always put to good use. The BBC News carried a story about the release of the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs the other day. As if to demonstrate to the younger and perhaps uninitiated people of today they ran a rather grainy old clip of the train involved on its journey back in 1963. Some young techno geek thought it might be a good idea to add a sound effect to the clip and added the shriek of a steam train for authenticity. Except the train involved was diesel. Well, it must have seemed like good idea to some ignorant BBC research assistant...
I wonder how many of the crowd at Tynecastle today will be smiling in the same way their contemporaries did five decades ago? I'll hazard a guess and say not a lot. Of course, those in the 1950s were watching the likes of Dave Mackay, Willie Bauld, Alfie Conn, Jimmy Wardhaugh and Alex Young - players who brought joy to even the sternest of fans.
Today, Hearts supporters will be watching the likes of Christian Nade attempt to hit a barn door....
4 comments:
I love your photographs Mike - and your hankering after the Match Day Experience of that era.
Growing up in the 60's I inherited a lot of Uncles' fitba books from that post-war to late 50's time and read them cover to cover dozens of times.
I was a nostalgia freak before I even started!
(Hibs / Scottish Cup chuckle chuckle....)
I do believe that you are mistaken about that being Adullamite. For the man in the picture was smiling. Furthermore, he appears to be much too young to be our cantankerous friend. For by that time, what teeth he would still have left would be much, much longer, I suspect.
I AM NOT, REPEAT NOT IN THAT PICTURE!
However while Mike watches spiders crawl up the window (He didn't get to the pub last night again) and Fishy reads aged tales of Confederate rebels, I can agree that smiling then was easier!
The atmosphere at a game in the 60's was often hostile, (try Ibrox for fun!)but in general terms folk were happier, more content as life was improving all the time.
Now we have all we want and more we miss something as things do not satisfy. The more we have the less smiles we appear to produce.
I know the answer.....
Spiders crawl up the window - I looked this up on the web...
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