Breaking up his tornadoes proved to be the wrong move by boss Turnbull
When John Brownlie was part of the great Hibs team which beat Celtic 2-1 in the 1972 League Cup Final, he was just 20 years old.
Not unreasonably, he expected that it would be just the first of many.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Indeed, his winner’s medal would prove to be the only one in his trophy cabinet.
Brownlie, now assistant to Derek Ure with East Stirling, believes that team would have brought more success if it had been kept together longer.
“We had a great group of players. We all got on well together, and most of us were more or less local,” he said.
“Everyone respected each other and, when that happens, you work harder. That’s when you get success.
“Manager Eddie Turnbull was terrific, if not exactly a great PR man. As a coach, though, he was the best I ever worked with.
“Training was always intense, and he’d make us do the same drills again and again – attack v defence. It was hard work, but it meant that we had a proper structure, and everyone knew their job.
“He could spot a player – and should have been jailed for theft! He signed Dundee United’s Alan Gordon and Alex Edwards from Dunfermline for peanuts, and paid Partick Thistle just £35,000 for Arthur Duncan.
“John Blackley was a class act at the back, Jim Herriot – who’d played in goal for Scotland – was another bargain buy, and how Edwards was never capped is beyond me.
“But the best player in our side was the skipper, Pat Stanton, who scored the opening goal in that Final early in the second half. He also made the second after an hour for Jimmy O’rourke.
“We’d been battered 6-1 by Celtic in the Scottish Cup Final earlier that year, but we were determined not to let that happen again.
“So we battened down the hatches and, although Kenny Dalglish pulled one back late on, we deserved the win.
“It was a very emotional day because it was the first major thing I’d won. I thought we could do that year after year, and maybe we could have.
“But the manager broke up that cup-winning side far too early. We had four topthree finishes-in-a-row under Turnbull, and came close to winning the league a couple of times.
“However, the manager was desperate to bring in Joe Harper from Everton, having signed him when he was at Aberdeen, but that meant he couldn’t play Jimmy or Alan, who was sold to Dundee.
“It changed the whole dynamic of the group, and that’s no disrespect to Joe, who was a great striker and a good guy. But it didn’t work out the way the boss had hoped.”
The Hibees are underdogs going into the fourth League Cup Final between the clubs, but Brownlie, now 69, believes they have a puncher’s chance.
“If they can start well and, ideally get the opening goal, then they could win it,” he said.
“They haven’t been in the best of form, but look what they did to Rangers in the semi-final.
“They’ve done the right thing in allowing David Gray to take charge at Hampden. You don’t want a new manager turning up at a cup final for his first game in charge.”