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The Other London Hibees On January 31st last year several London Hibs members had the great privilege of accompanying Joe Baker back to his old stomping ground at Highbury to see Arsenal vs Southampton. It was great to see the respect and affection that Joe is held in by Arsenal fans. The programme devoted a whole double centre page to Joe (see below) and there was also a mention that he was there as a guest of London Hibs elsewhere in the programme. The best moment came, however, after the game when Pat Rice, Arsenal Assistant Manager was holding court in the Highbury boot room and engaged in animated discussion with Joe. Pat was finally persuaded to talk to a persistent telephone caller. Pat picked up the phone, said "look, will you piss off, I'm talking with an Arsenal legend" and put the phone back down again - wonderful. After the game we all started talking about other Hibs players who had played for Arsenal and from there it widened to include all English Clubs. As you can see below, we then picked a team of Hibs and London club players and it's some team! It would appear however, that for some reason the Hibs - London connection seems to be confined to attacking players; we could only find 2 defenders although we have 3 goalkeepers (we thought about including Dave Beaumont but Luton isn't in London and he was shite anyway - I still can't hear his name without having nightmares about Wayne Foster). As a result, we have played a very adventurous formation with the genius Alex Cropley as a wingback and Ray Wilkins as sweeper. Butch doubles up as manager. As we said, we had 3 goalkeepers and we went for the legendary Willie Harper from the 1920's just ahead of Lawrie Leslie. There was also Budgie who has played for every club in Britain so of course had to include a couple of London clubs in his inventory. London Hibs XI Willie Harper (Arsenal) Ray Wilkins (Chelsea/QPR/Palace)* Neil Orr (W Ham) Roy Barry (Palace) Alex Cropley (Arsenal) Mickey Weir (MillwaH) Gordon Durie (Chelsea/Spurs) MacLeod (Arsenal) Archibald (Spur) Baker (Arsenal) Best (Fuiham) Subs: Leslie (W Ham/Millwall). Burridge (Palace/QPR) Crawford (Millwall) Marinello (Arsenal) With that team I don't think we would have to defend! * For those anoraks out there we know that Butch played for Millwall and Orient after leaving Hibs and that Budgie probably played for every London Club but we only had so much space. We have a good representation but there are no Wimbledon, Brentford or Charlton players. We may have missed some reallv obvious so let us know. Miscellaneous facts: 1. 10 of the squad are full internationals 2. 6 players (Harper, Wilkins, Dune, Macleod Archibald and Baker) have played in a Scotland - England game. 3. George Best and Roy Barry both served prison sentences. 4. Peter Marinello was known as the new George Best and scored on his debut for Arsenal against Manchester United. Apart from the teams shown above, Barry and Marinello both played for Hearts. Cropley and Burridge played for Villa and Wilkins and Dune both played for the Huns.
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