Quote Originally Posted by Alfiembra View Post
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I’ve always felt Willie Macfarlane never got the credit he deserved for building the foundations of what became the Tornadoes, and I don’t think his exit from the club was handled well to bring in Eddie Turnbull. It’s often overlooked that Turnbull inherited a terrific team/squad, he only tweaked it slightly and added a couple of, admittedly, fantastic players, Alex Edwards and Alan Gordon, to create the Tornadoes. I remember chatting to Pat Stanton many many years ago about it, and if my memory serves me well, he thought that Willie had too many fingers in too many pies to be solely focused on the Hibs job, he was a bookie as well as manager at that time and that was part of his downfall.
Willie didn’t have the bookies business while he was Hibs manager. He did have a plant hire business in Ballantyne Road which was very successful and somebody ran that for him while he was manager.His downfall was all to do with not letting Tom Hart pick the team and it gave Hart the opportunity to bring his pal Eddie in once he got rid of Dave Ewing.