Hearts On Tour

Hearts OnTour

The The 50s/60s Tours

Throughout the most successful decade in the Club’s history, manager Tommy Walker forged close bonds between his talented players by taking them on six post-season tours to destinations as far apart as the USA, South Africa and Australia. This season, I’m going to take a look at the memorabilia associated with Hearts’ tours of the 1950’s.

Having got their ISL programme off to a winning start against Blackburn Rovers, Hearts were invited to City Hall to meet the Mayor of New York, Robert F Wagner. A bus was laid on from the players’ hotel but it was only after arriving that the club’s officials were told that the Werder

Bremen players had also been invited and that the bus had departed without them. The enterprising Germans decided they would just take the underground and ended up arriving before the Hearts team. It hadn’t been plain sailing though as the German team had brought a gift for the Mayor which they had promptly dropped under a train and which had to be rescued from the tracks after the train had left the station. To top it all off, after the speeches and presentations, the Hearts party stepped outside to find … the bus had left without them!

As Hearts embarked on the only real “tour” element of their summer with a trip to Toronto, there was another surprise as, despite only being away for two nights, the players had to pack all their things and vacate their rooms with all the luggage being stored in Tommy Walker’s top floor room. But having sweltered in the New York heat, the players were glad to step off their flight to the cool of Toronto which felt very much like home. This was Hearts’ third visit to Toronto in six years and as usual, they were met by a string of ex-pat Scots and treated like royalty with receptions in their honor both before and after their match against a team labelled the East Canada Professional League All-Stars and which contained a few familiar faces for the Hearts lads. Ex-Hibs players Bobby Nicol and John Young were in the Canadian team along with ex-East Fife and Sunderland inside right Charlie “Legs” Fleming who won a single Scotland cap and was plying his trade for Toronto City at the age of 37 in 1964. The team also contained Nigel Sims, recently emigrated from Aston Villa and a Brazilian, Carlos “Feoti” Dias who had been a teammate of Pele at Santos (though there appears to be almost no trace of him online). Astonishingly (with hindsight) the All-Stars team was managed on the day by Malcolm Allison Around 6,000 (mostly of Scots ancestry) were at the game and they saw an unfamiliar Hearts line up with a few regulars rested and Alan Anderson, John Cumming, Alan Gordon and Frank Sandeman drafted into the team in a 4-2-4 formation. It took Hearts a little while to find their feet but they started to dominate the game after a cautious start and a two-goal burst just before half-time killed the game off. Roy Barry got the first on the fortieth minute and just three minutes later, Hearts doubled their lead with the young Alan Gordon finding the net on his only appearance on the tour. The second half was a repeat of the first with Hearts dominating but this time being unable to add to their lead and the game finished 2-0. Tommy Walker said after the game that he felt that the All-Stars were the equivalent of a top Scottish second division side and singled out keeper Sims and “Feoti” for praise. Regular readers of this column will be familiar with the

cover of the programme for the game which was very similar those produced in Toronto in 1958 and 1960 and once again the only advertiser is department store Eatons which suggests that they may have financed the production of the programme. A fairly simple eight page affair, it sold on the day for 15c. The cover, in a pale maroon with white and black fonts used has match details and an action picture showing Enore Zanoni making a save in a recent league encounter. On page 2, Ed Waring’s welcome suggests that it was Hearts who were keen to add to their ISL programme by playing once again in Toronto. He writes that “although the Hearts primary purpose in coming to North America is to play in the ISL, nevertheless their officials expressed a wish to again play in Toronto”. The programme was certainly up to date, noting that Hearts had beaten Blackburn Rovers in their first match in that competition. Pen pictures of the Hearts players followed on pages 2 and 3 with eleven of the group having their photographs alongside their biographies. The players remaining incognito were Jim Murphy, Roy Barry, John Cumming, Alan Gordon and Danny Ferguson. Page 4 has a Hearts team group and a warm welcome from the Ontario Football Association’s officials who said that “Hearts are always welcome guests. This isn’t the first time they played in Canada and we sincerely hope it won’t be the last”. Well, it wasn’t as Hearts were back in Canada just seven years later. The team lines are on page 5 and All-Stars pen pics take up pages 6 and 7. There’s quite a bit of quality there with Tony Book at right back. Like Malcolm Allison, Book had been at Bath City before heading to Toronto for a year and like Allison, he then made his name at Maine Road, playing 244 games for Manchester City before managing them for a further five years. There were two Argentinians and two Brazilians amongst the Scots. Centre forward Bentivegna had played for Estudiantes de la Plata in Argentina. For Hearts, there was no time to rest on their laurels. They had to head back to New York, unpack, and get ready to face group favourites, Lanerossi Vicenza of Italy. More on that next time. Gary Cowen is a member of Hearts heritage group and is currently writing a book about the Hearts post-season tours.