W Wilson (3)
Welsh
Match Information
Attendance: 15,000
Referee: A Allan (Glasgow)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
I can see you looking hard at the result, thinking the goals have been given to the wrong team. But it’s right. Rangers wouldn’t have believed it possible, and – on the word of a good Heart – the Hearts didn’t. We all know that the Tynecastle team have a modest opinion of their own ability. They are not a great team. They are, in fact, rather an ordinary one, and they know what their faults are. But at Ibrox they showed Rangers how to do it. Rangers, by way of squaring the account, showed the Hearts how not to do it. We may argue the matter through from A to Z, but we will come always to the same end – it was a positively bad display by the Rangers that caused the debacle – more in scoring than in play, but a debacle just the same. For feeling that certain defeat awaited them, the Hearts gradually came to realise that they were meeting opposition with a considerable number of vulnerable points. They played on these with perfect success. There was nothing in the earlier play to foreshadow after events, although Welsh had an immediate chance of scoring, and then both Graham and Wilson let slip a beautiful opening. What at once impressed me was the robustness of McKenzie and J Wilson, the Hearts’ backs. The half’s were being easily enough beaten at this period, but, when the backs showed them so good an example, the half’s soon joined in, and between them then simply bottled up the Rangers; forwards for the greater part of the game. On the other hand, Gordon and Logan were as often out of their place as in it, and Bowie developed an unusually erratic manner, and, though Manderson and Muir did their best to make up for a weak middle line, they were bound to suffer, the more so as Muir sustained a cut above the eye which dazed him. In the defence, as a whole, there was little recovery. Cairns had had a shot at Boyd, and Reid one that went swishing over the bar, when at the end of 25 minutes, Millar dribbled in to the Rangers’ goal, and both Lock and Muir failing to stop him, the defence was all drawn towards the Hearts’ right, and when the ball somehow got across to the left, Wilson had only to blow it through, but he used his boot to make certain. Until the interval, it was a curiously unsettled game, with Rangers always groping after the game they couldn’t clutch, and the Hearts always improving through becoming more conscious of their own strength and of their opponents’ weakness. Rangers’ goal had a lucky escape in the first minute of the second half, but it needed only seven minutes in all for the Hearts to go ahead by another goal. Manderson had been holding Wilson well, but this time the Hearts’ man got a two yards’ start, without being offside, and, though harassed by the Ranger, he shot hard towards goal. Lock, I think, was surprised at Wilson getting in the shot, and all he could do was to swing his right fist at the ball. He hit it all right, only to see it smash itself against the inside of the fair post, and back into the net. Rangers had had just as much of the ball as the Hearts up till then, yet the one side could get the goals and looked likely to get more, while the other appeared likely to play till doomsday without getting one. When the Hearts were scoring their goals, the home defence seemed to fade away, and it was so again when Welsh headed the fourth after Sinclair had nicely placed the ball to him. Only then did some of the Rangers players show any devil. The forwards made some desperate sweeps on the Hearts’ defence, but it was like running their heads against a wall. They could get only an odd look at Boyd. Mercer hereabout stood near his goal, and with his head simply tapped the ball away at will. It became something of a joke. The Hearts deserve all the praise their friends gave them. They showed brains, the Rangers showed next to none. The style of game the Rangers played exactly suited the Hearts. Their forwards tried to play the closest football with a wet ball, and players like Nellies and Mercer had only to wait on them and beat them. Cunningham could do nothing right, Duncan was perished, Reid eclipsed, and Cairns and Paterson fighting a forlorn hope. Martin was a fit colleague for Nellies and Mercer. The Hearts’ forwards were not dazzling, but they put all their qualities to the best advantage against weak half-backs, and went through them like a bayonet through paper. Millar I liked for his go-ahead style and his accurate passes to Sinclair. Wilson, though often held up by Manderson, was there to finish off the work of the others when he scored his first and third goals, while his second – or was it Lock’s – was a purely individual effort. Welsh played his best game at centre. Graham kept Wilson going, but he used to finish better. Lock seemed to be without confidence in the men in front of him, otherwise I could not explain why he came out of his goal so often, twice when a goal was scored. Boyd had no reason to leave hid goal, for very little got past McKenzie and J Wilson, two effective if not over-stylish backs. A lot of the miss-kicking that went on among the Rangers’ players may have been due to the wet ball, but I am not mistake, the Hearts were playing with the same ball. Also, the Hearts seemed speedier, but that was only a delusion. It was them playing better football
