The Winter of 1962-63 (Continued)
January 1963 arrived and still it snowed. Defender Tommy Leishman, a former team mate of Hibs centre forward Gerry Baker at St Mirren, was signed from Liverpool. The weather conditions were so bad Leishman played his first game on Portobello beach in a full scale practice match as Hibs struggled to find training facilities which had escaped the icy grip of winter. On occasion they travelled as far as Dunbar to find a suitable training surface, and as well as an offer to use the Pleasance Boys Club's well equipped gymnasium, both Edinburgh clubs received invites to use Powderhall Stadium.
The arctic conditions also affected the Scottish Cup competition with numerous attempts made to play Hibernian's second round tie against Second Division Brechin City at Glebe Park. After several postponements, a request was eventually made to the SFA for the game be played at nearby Arbroath whose pitch had escaped the worst of the weather, presumably due to its proximity to the salty sea air. As it was in breach of the competition's rules this request was initially refused by the far seeing authorities, but because of the by now almost emergency situation, the SFA eventually saw sense and reversed the decision. By this time, however, it was too late as travel arrangements had already been made to play the game at the original venue. Before the game Brechin City announced they had acquired a so-called revolutionary new special anti-freeze mixture which the manufacturers had claimed would soften the soil sufficiently to allow play to proceed. Whether this mixture was used is uncertain, but the 2,380 robust fans who braved the elements, paying a grand total of £341 for the privilege, watched twenty two players slip and slide on what one member of the press described as a ‘porridge pitch that was quite clearly unplayable’. Hibs eventually managed to advance to the next round, overcoming stuffy opponents 2-0 in their first game for almost four weeks.
At a meeting of all thirty seven clubs, St Johnstone proposed a six week mid-season shutdown to start the following season. The suggestion was considered unrealistic by Hibs chairman Harry Swan, as was another proposal for summer football. According to the Hibernian chairman, the unpredictable Scottish weather made a winter shutdown unpractical with severe weather likely to appear outside of any anticipated period.
One proposal which was adopted, however, was the introduction of the Pools Panel. Without football for a lengthy period many clubs, particularly the smaller ones, were now in desperate need of a financial injection, and with the Pools companies also facing extreme financial hardship due to the cancellation of the fixture lists, an emergency scheme was introduced which saw a panel of experts predict the results of abandoned games. Coming into operation only when thirty or more games in both Scotland and England had been called off, the panel, each member receiving the then not inconsiderable sum of £100 per week, first sat on Saturday 26th January 1963, the same day Hibernian's match against Brechin had managed to escape the rigours of the extreme conditions. The novelty was not universally popular at the start, with many supporters baffled by some of the panels predictions, particularly when a Hibs side, who had won only once in the league since the beginning of November, were credited with an away draw against a Dundee side ten places above them in the table. However, people soon got used to the idea and despite initially being introduced as an emergency measure to tide over the bad winter, the scheme was eventually extended and is still in use today.
A reserve fixture between Hibs and Queen of the South at Easter Road on the 2nd of March became the city’s first senior game of 1963. Both sides took the opportunity to field virtually full strength first teams with Tommy Leishman playing his first competitive game in Hibs colours. Teenagers Jim O’Rourke and Peter Cormack featured prominently in the game, between them engineering Hibernian's goal in a 2-1 defeat. Reserve team coach Jimmy McColl was less than happy with the result however - with his second string unbeaten in the previous fifteen games, he joked of the irony of defeat coming when the team was packed with first team regulars.
On the 9th of March the weather in Scotland eased at last, allowing Hibs to fit in their first league game in nearly three months before travelling to Spain to face Valencia in the Fairs Cup. In front of a sparse 5,000 crowd the home side could only manage a 1-1 draw in a drab game at Easter Road against a Third Lanark side featuring former Hibs captain Sammy Baird who had been transferred to Cathkin several months before. As a result of the severe weather wing half Tommy Leishman was making his first team debut for the club a full eight weeks after moving to Edinburgh.
Season 1962-63 would be the club's worst for over thirty years, a 4-0 victory against the already relegated Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy in the final game of the season allowing the club to escape relegation for the second time in its history.