Thought this press cutting on Kerrydale Street was quite interesting. A Hun at my work years ago used to delight in telling me Hibs were the first sectarian club
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/8189/hibs.jpg
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Thread: Hibs open to all in 1889
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17-11-2009 12:31 PM #1
Hibs open to all in 1889
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17-11-2009 12:41 PM #3
Reading that para, I think you may just have maybe got the date wrong - "No enquiry into religion was ever made...."
I read that to mean that the club was open to anyone right from the start - 1875, in other words.
But many thanks - nice find and another wee sidelight into the club history.
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17-11-2009 12:41 PM #4This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
HFC was founded by Catholics and in its formative years it was a condition that any Catholic playing for the club should be practising and not lapsed. There's a difference between 'you must be Catholic to play for Hibs' and 'if you're a Catholic and play for Hibs you must be a practising Catholic and not lapsed.'
The sad thing is that the club would have willingly allowed any decent players to join regardless of their religion but because Irish immigrants were not welcome in Edinburgh nobody of a non Catholic persuasion wanted to join the club.This is how it feels
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17-11-2009 12:42 PM #5This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I don't mean to sound cynical but it would be really easy to create something like that. Without more details as to what the document is that it's part of, it's not exactly something that would stand up as 'evidence' of anything.
I suppose I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, because it's the first thing you'll get asked if you show it to anybody.
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17-11-2009 12:50 PM #6This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Football was a massive sport then as it is now. Imagine the furore if Petrie wrote to the paper with blatant lies, there would be quite a kerffuffel.
Much of our understanding of history is built on less, to be devil's advocate against it you'd need to present contradictory evidence, no?
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17-11-2009 01:01 PM #7This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
TBH, the minute you said it was from Kerrydale St, my anti-OF, cynical, suspicous nature kicked in.
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17-11-2009 01:05 PM #8This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Scottish Sport, January 22nd 1889
Some of the posters on Kerrydale Street don't seem too bad to be fair
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17-11-2009 01:06 PM #9This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Cool, sounds genuine then.
Though I do have issues about the last sentence in your post
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17-11-2009 01:10 PM #10This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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17-11-2009 03:36 PM #11This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
it was not till 1891[after some smeltic directors shafted us] also says we stopped playing between 89/91
and that we were the first non sectarian club in scotland when we started up again in 1891Last edited by erin go bragh; 17-11-2009 at 03:58 PM.
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17-11-2009 03:47 PM #12This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Does he take equal delight in the fact that his team are now the last sectarian club?
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17-11-2009 04:07 PM #13This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I haven't found any reference to the player Higgins yet, but the records from that era are somewhat sparse
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17-11-2009 04:13 PM #14This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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17-11-2009 04:23 PM #15
I think you need to admit that Hibs employed pretty strict criteria for playing for them. As one poster described, basically a church going Catholic.
The key for me at that time is this. The guys who were playing for Hibs would not have got a game for anyone else based on their religeon and nationality. So, in order to play at all, they needed to form a club of their own. Even then, people tried to stop them.
Its a bit like black football teams in South Africa. No way would they get to play the whites at one time so they formed their own teams and often just played other blacks.
Perhaps they took it a little far but I cannot see this as 'sectarian'. They were clearly NOT bigotted. More restrictive, like FP rugby clubs. They were not excluding others, more INCLUDING themselves. BY 91, at the latest, even this was all gone and they were clearly stated as open to all. Meantime Rangers took their bile into the 21 century.
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17-11-2009 04:40 PM #16This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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17-11-2009 04:42 PM #17
On the Hibs CD on one of the "history of Hibs" segments it does say that we were a Catholics only club when we first formed. We became non-sectarian after we re-formed. We were even denied promotion to Div 1 the first season after that because of "lingering" doubts about our non-sectarian policy.
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17-11-2009 05:19 PM #18
My understanding was that when we were formed it was under the auspices of the St Pats CYMS (Catholic Young Mens Society) and Hibernian was only one of a number of leisure activites which that Society ran specifically for the young Catholic men of that parish. Canon Hannans main objective was to arrange activities to keep the young Catholics in a slum parish away from the temptations of drink and crime.
My understanding was that the player Brogan was a Catholic however didnt attend mass and was let go because he was not a practising Catholic. The main criteria of the CYMS were that first and foremost you had to be a practising Catholic and attend mass which then opened up the CYMS social activities such as Hibs to church members.
Were the early Hibs sectarian ? No more so than any social activitity run by a Church for church members. Certainly not "sectarian" in the way that word is used nowadays in a Scottish fitba context. I find that most of those who play the Hibs were a sectarian club card are usually characters trying to divert attention from their own clubs and own supports failings in that particular area.Last edited by Brizo; 17-11-2009 at 05:29 PM.
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17-11-2009 05:37 PM #19This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1893-94...ttish_football
Mackay also notes that Hibs wrote to the EEN moaning about "the unfair and biased critcism of our team". Another example of the Hibs bias in the EEN!Last edited by Part/Time Supporter; 17-11-2009 at 05:39 PM.
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17-11-2009 08:48 PM #20
Frank Higgins played a couple of games for Hibs in 1884/85. There's little information about him, but he is mentioned in Lugton I. He seems to have been a reserve player that played in a couple of friendlies.
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17-11-2009 09:04 PM #21
There's a book that I used for my higher History class a few years ago that mentions Hibs briefly during a timeline of something (I can't remember what) and it basically says that Hibs were a sectarian club until a certain year (I can't remember the year either) when we finally ended the policy of only allowing Roman Catholics to play for us.
Ever since I read that book, I have been under the impression that Hibs were a sectarian club during our early years and I've no doubt that anyone else who has read that same book will think the same.
So if it's a load of rubbish, Hibs should be asking the people who publish the books to change that bit.
Maybe someone who does higher History just now will know the book I mean.
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18-11-2009 08:08 AM #22This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Aside from Kerrydale St, do you know the source of that cutting?
Anyway, no matter, the Hun at work needed reminded that we were enlightened enough to become an open club one hundred years before they did and that the circumstances were rather different. As Alan Lugton in his "Making of Hibernian" points out, non-protestants were very unlikely to have wanted to play for Hibs in the early days. The club had a focus on (Catholic) charitable work and a very strong political outlook which embraced Irish Home Rule. Hardly likely to endear them to many Scottish Presbyterians.
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18-11-2009 08:27 AM #23This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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18-11-2009 08:31 AM #24This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I'm sure I've read that they were open in the early years but changed in a definite attempt to be the opposite of Celtic.
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18-11-2009 03:17 PM #25This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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20-05-2018 05:53 AM #26This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1889-01-22/1889-01-22?NewspaperTitle=The%2BScotsman&IssueId=BL%2F0000 540%2F18890122%2F&County=Midlothian%2C%20Scotland"We know the people who have invested so far are simple fans." Vladimir Romanov - Scotsman 10th December 2012
"Romanov was like a breath of fresh air - laced with cyanide." Me.
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20-05-2018 07:43 AM #27
There was another publication, the Edinburgh Courant , around until the end of the 19th century.
There is is an online archive for it.
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20-05-2018 08:02 AM #28This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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20-05-2018 08:26 AM #29This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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20-05-2018 09:26 AM #30
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