MINORITY CHANNEL, BBC ALBA recently excelled themselves once more after other excellent documentaries about Scottish football legends, Jim Baxter and Jock Stein when they produced a beautiful step back into post-war Edinburgh and five of Hibs’ ‘greatest men’.
These were some of my personal thoughts on an emotional viewing of it to my good friends on the Hibees Bounce website:
‘I recorded the documentary last night, went out for a drink and sat down to watch this alone when I got home around midnight.
It’s a little while since I have been touched by anything about Hibs so much – even though I am used to a great emotional closeness with the club since being a young boy.
I understand the criticisms (in the true sense of the word) regarding the production but for me they were easy to put to one side as I was given the privilege of an insight into some of the sights and memories of people intrinsically wrapped up in my club. Who could not feel for ‘Nicker’ Johnstone’s daughter, Nicola as she lovingly spoke of her father and his teammates and suddenly and obviously in front of the camera, felt a sense of loss for her dad. The word ‘Family’ is occasionally an overused one when referring to this wide and disparate group of people we are that follow this club down its generations and enjoy it’s meaning. It’s in brief moments like that though that I really understand and cannot deny it.
The background of Meadowbank was not significant for me. A great story can be told anywhere and I really liked the way the young team assumed a fun and youthful swagger as they emulated our old heroes. I thought they looked great and played their part well. Well done lads. The simple and striking kits were a thing of beauty too against the sepia backdrop. Hibernian kits are invariably a thing of beauty.
So, as you can see, I’d rather celebrate this documentary for what it was – a loving and affectionate glimpse into a time before many of us knew. Yes, it was one or two things short of the full and complete story but much more significantly, it carried and nurtured with care the deep feelings that we all have about this club and yet sometimes have difficulties explaining why.
I’d a tear in my eye before the strains of Sunshine on Leith were gently introduced. I sat there remembering exactly why I bleed green and white, why I am a Hibernian supporter and why this thing matters so much to me so a ‘thank you’ to the programme makers is offered.
As the credits played out on a look back into a golden Hibernian era, an era inhabited by my father and grandfather and other family members, it was all I could do to not desperately want to be there, at Easter Road at that very moment.
These are the ties that bind us. Hibernian Football Club.’
THE TEARS OF A CLOWN 