Double Issue Programme
Friday 4th August 1967
Queen’s Park FC Centenary Celebration Match
Queens Park v British Amateur Select
Saturday 5th August 1967
Grand Challenge Match
Celtic v Tottenham Hotspur
I am still enjoying looking through the haul of programmes that I recently added to my collection. Whilst doing that early this morning, I was absolutely delighted to come across this quite unique issue.
As you can see, this programme is a double issue which celebrates the centenary of Queen’s Park FC, the club that gave association football to Scotland! Their part in the celebrations of that August weekend was to take part in a game against a British Amateur Select XI, which the first few pages cover. The latter pages focus on the game taking place on the very next day between Celtic and Tottenham Hotspur, not only two of the best teams in Great Britain at that time, but also two of the best in the whole of Europe.
The programme consists of 20 pages from the front to back cover, and as you would expect is packed full of the most wonderful information.
With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 focuses on Queen’s Park FC and provides a very interesting historical look at this famous Scottish Football Club. The article starts off by explaining that at the time of writing, Queen’s Park Football Club were the only amateur club still to be found in league football in Great Britain, although Bohemians and Cliftonville were keeping the flag of amateurism unfurled in Ireland.
I was very interested to read that it is one of football’s ironies that only the casting vote of the chairman at the first committee meeting of Queen’s Park prevented the club from being known as Celtic! Starting life in the English F.A. since when their formation, as there was no Scottish Football Association, Queen’s tasted a modicum of success by reaching two FA Cup Finals, only to be beaten by Blackburn Rovers on both occasions at the Kennington Oval. Queen’s Park withdrew from the English F.A. in 1886, as the S.F.A. was now up and running and have course stayed in the Scottish Football System ever since.
Page 3 of the programme is titled The Three Hampdens and provides an interesting look at the history of the famous Hampden Park stadium. Queen’s Park began life by playing their home games at the Queen’s Park Recreation Ground, with ironically the land that housed that ground was, in 1967, being used as the car park for Hampden Park! In October 1873 the club moved to the first ever Hampden Park, which they leased from the Corporation of Glasgow for £20 per year. The Second Hampden was close to the original one, and for many football enthusiasts, it is better known as Cathkin Park and the home ground of Third Lanark Football Club. The ground was formally opened on 31st October 1903 with a Scottish League match between Queen’s Park and Celtic, which the home club won 1-0. A third Hampden was completed in 1937 and in the April of that year, nearly 150,000 spectators attended the Scotland v England international which officially opened the stadium.
Page 4 is a full-page advert with the following page displaying a photograph from the Scottish Cup tie between Queen’s Park and Celtic in February 1965. The photograph shows Bobby Lennox of Celtic firing the ball past the Queen’s goalkeeper Bobby Clark to give the Glasgow giants a 1-0 victory.
Page 6 provides some words from three international football players that detail some of their memories of playing at Hampden Park. The players included in this section were Sir Stanley Matthews of Stoke City, Blackpool and England, Alan Morton of Queen’s Park, Rangers and Scotland, and Bertie Peacock of Celtic, Coleraine and Ireland.
Page 7 is titled – Queen’s Park’s Olympic Record 1938-1938. Again, this is section is a very interesting read and starts by saying that the game between Queen’s Park and the British Amateur Select team was also being used as an Olympic trial to gauge the performance of players hoping to be selected for a Great Britain XI, that could come through the qualifying rounds and represent the country at the 1968 Olympic Games to be held in Mexico. The article then looks back at former Queen’s Park players who had played for Great Britain from 1936 onwards. The 1936 British team included four Queen’s Park players; Jackie Gardner (later to become the president of Queen’s Park Football Club) Jimmy Crawford, Joe Kyle, and Mac Dodds.
Page 8 advertises two home movies available to buy and watch via an 8mm or 16mm projector, featuring two famous games played earlier in 1967. The first was the 1967 European Cup Final that, of course, Celtic won by 2-1 against Inter Milan, with the second game being the 3-2 victory for Scotland over England at Wembley Stadium. The following page shows photographs of the people who oversaw the respective club’s playing over this special weekend in August 1967. For Celtic, it was Chairman Robert Kelly, Queen’s Park with President Balsillie Russell and for Tottenham Hotspur, Chairman Frederick Wale.
Pages 10 and 11 show all the team lineups for both games taking place with the following page providing Celtic player profiles. Some of the great players at Celtic at that time were Tommy Gemmell, Jimmy Johnstone and Billy McNeil, who, before joining Celtic, played for Blantyre Victoria. The great defender joined Celtic in 1957 and stayed with the club until the end of his career in 1975.
Page 13 is a full-page advert whilst page 14 provides Tottenham Hotspur player profiles. Just like Celtic, there were some great players at Tottenham in 1967 that included the likes of Pat Jennings, Dave Mackay and of course the great Jimmy Greaves. The Spurs player profiles are followed on page 15 with a team photograph.
Page 16 provides two articles with the first one looking back at Celtic’s quite brilliant victory over Inter Milan in the 1966/1967 European Cup Final as well as the origins of this famous Scottish Club. The second article takes a similar look at Tottenham Hotspur who had won the 1966/1967 FA Cup as well as finishing in 3rd position in the English First Division. The following page provides a brilliant photograph of the jubilant Celtic players on their return to Parkhead with the European Cup.
Pages 18 and 19 both feature full page adverts with the programme being completed on page 20 with an aerial photograph of Hampden Park.
A quite brilliant programme and one that I am very happy to have in my ever-growing collection.
