Friday 7th September, 2018 at 11:26am
Scottish Cup – 2nd Round
11th February 1961
East Fife 1 Partick Thistle 3
This match was, of course, played at the earlier Bayview Park, not the venue we shall be visiting shortly on Irn-Bru Cup business. The best days of East Fife were now behind them. In the two previous decades they had been a real power in the land. I shall never forget my disappointment as a young supporter when they beat Thistle 3-2 in the 1953 Scottish League Cup Final at Hampden Park. Anyway, by 1961 Thistle held the upper hand and won the featured match quite comfortably with the following team:- John Freebairn, Joe Hogan, Sandy Brown, Alex Wright, John Harvey, Frank Donlevy, George Muir, Billy Cunningham, Joe McBride, Neil Duffy, David McParland.
Joe McBride opened the scoring after 31 minutes. This should surprise nobody at all because he was deadly in and around the box. I was bitterly disappointed when he was transferred for a modest fee to Motherwell. Getting back to the chosen match, East Fife equalised and so it remained level at 1-1 until half-time. However, after 51 minutes, a penalty-kick was awarded to Thistle and Alex Wright made no mistake, before Neil Duffy put the issue beyond doubt with Thistle’s third goal after 58 minutes. Sadly, we lost 2-1 at home to Hearts in the next round. We said – There is always next year. Here we are in 2018 and it still hasn’t happened for us in the Scottish Cup.
The attendance given for the featured match was 5,577. It will be interesting to compare that with how many turn up for our forthcoming game at New Bayview Park. With reference to the match programme there is no indication of the date of the game. That remains a secret until page 2. The price was 3d. There were eight pages, of which five consisted almost entirely of adverts.
Changed days, indeed.
Robert R
