Harold Davis was on the winning side of the 6-4 Queen’s Park and Rangers Easter Monday 1957 encounter and the game is one of the many highlights that he has experienced since being born in 1933. Davis has ties in both of the Glasgow camps and he will be a guest of the Hampden club this Saturday where he will sit with players he was in direct opposition with in 1957 and despite his playing career at Ibrox, he will be donning a Queen’s Park tie for the game.
The Davis story begins in Fife where he was a player with an East Fife side that were having a golden period winning the Scottish League Cup in 1947–48, 1949–50 and 1953–54, however there were to be no winners medal on the football field for Davis at that time.
Davis explained, “East Fife had a really good team but I never won any medals with them as I had been called up for my National Service in 1951. They kept me on their books which was a wonderful gesture and I was back in the country after being injured in Korea when they won the League Cup in 1953.”
“I did manage to get up and send them a telegram to say well done all the same.”
Davis was of course so severely injured by enemy action in Korea that he was out of football for two years. He made such a strong recovery from his wounds that his manager from Methil, Scot Symon, took him to Rangers where he was now in charge.
He was to be an Ibrox player from 1956 to 1964 and he looks back fondly at his time as a Light Blue saying, “I had 8 seasons there and had an absolute great time. There were great players there and great guys and we had a bond. We were all mates and that is one thing that we have over modern day players.”
“They do not have the same level of friendships that we had.”
The friendship between the Rangers players was tested on that Easter Monday just 2 days after the Scottish Cup Final between Falkirk and Kilmarnock had ended at 1-1. Queen’s raced into a 4-1 lead with Davis saying, “I remember Queen’s Park being ahead but the two goals from Jonny Hubbard just before half-time started to change things around. They were always hard games against Queen’s Park then and the one earlier in the season had ended 3-3.”
“That game was played on a freezing cold day in February. It was snowing, raining and bitterly cold and the game would not be played nowadays.”
A much warmer affair and a highlight of Davis’ time as a Rangers player was the European Cup Winners Cup Final of 1961 against Florentina, although the now 79 year old reckons that the Italians were years ahead of Scotland at that time.
Davis said, “They did a real Italian job on us and won both games in the two legged affair and lifted the trophy with a 4-1 aggregate. We put up a good fight of it but we never really caught on to the European way of playing football and were just that wee bit behind the times.”
European highlights of a different sort were seen later that year as Rangers played Eintracht Frankfurt in a game to mark the installation of floodlights at the National Stadium of Hampden.
Davis said, “I scored twice in that game and also hit the bar. The Frankfurt side had lost to Real Madrid in the famous 7-3 European Cup Final the year before and there was a huge crowd at the game.”
“We lost 3-2 but it was a great night and I enjoyed the occasion especially as we put on a thoroughly good show after going behind.”
A year was spent at Partick Thistle as Davis wound down his career as a player and he was to return to Hampden as Queen’s Park’s head coach in 1965 to replace Eddie Turnbull who was heading north to light a fire underneath Aberdeen.
His stay at the Spiders was to last 3 years and his side almost made headlines of the great sporting kind when the amateurs came close to sending Celtic’s Lisbon Lions crashing out of the Scottish Cup.
Davis said, “We had a good team then although we were still in the Second Division. We gave Celtic a real fright and were leading 3-1 at half-time. We had players there like Malky McKay, Eddie Hunter and Peter Buchanan, who are all still involved at Queen’s Park now, and they were as tough as old boots.”
However a bit like the epic league game between Rangers and Queen’s Park, Celtic outscored their opponents to win through and as well as European Cup glory that season they lifted the Scottish Cup with a 2-0 success over Turnbull’s Aberdeen.
It was not just the Queen’s Park players that were street wise and tough as old boots with Davis saying, “As you can imagine with my Rangers history there was a bit of rivalry in the build-up to the game with Jock Stein. He knew I had been around the block but that did not stop him trying to get one better on me.”
“They had been playing in a European tie on the Wednesday night Vojvodina Novi Sad and won it 2-0 with a last minute goal to qualify for the semi-finals. Jock phoned me on the Friday to say that the pitch was in a terrible state and the game had little chance of going ahead. He told me that there was an inspection at 10 and to pop along if I wanted but it was a formality.”
Davis knew that Stein was full of wily ways and he popped along at 10 to 9, an hour earlier than instructed to join the referee and a far from impressed Stein on the pitch for the inspection and David laughed, “Jock would catch a lot of people out but I knew him too well.”
A three year period was spent with Queen’s before Davis returned to Ibrox to work with manager Davie White and the pair left in 1969 under what White described as ‘very disappointing circumstances.’
The duo did have more success at Dundee when they lifted the 1973-1974 League Cup Final with a 1-0 success over Celtic thanks to a goal from Gordon Wallace with Davis saying, “It was a horrible day weather-wise but a great day for Dundee and for Davie.”
That season the Dark Blues also beat Rangers 3-0 in what was a bitter-sweet moment for White and Davis with the latter saying, “That game does not get mentioned much but we won a Scottish Cup tie at Ibrox 3-0. It was one of the first ever games to be played on a Sunday.”
A bit like that Sunday cup-tie Davis will have mixed loyalties this weekend as he said, “I still go down to Rangers when I am invited down south and I am still very much a Rangers man but this weekend I will be a guest of Queen’s Park and will have a black and white tie on.”
“I am still a member of Queen’s Park and go to their annual Dinner. I have a lot of feelings for them and I might even want them to win this weekend. It looks like Rangers will go on and win the league now and it would be great if Queen’s Park were promoted as well.”
Davis’ remarkable life is documented in his recently written book – Tougher than Bullets – however he was quick to point out that it was not just a book about war and football as he said, “The book documents my life from a Juvenile onwards but of course the title comes from what happened in Korea. The sales have been exceptional and it has made a few top ten lists and I have also just been invited to next year’s Edinburgh Book Festival.”
“That was a highly desirable call to take and one that I was not expecting. I was talked into the writing the book as a way of augmenting my role as the patron of the Erskine Hospital for Rangers. The money raised from it will go there and so far sales have been better than expected.”
Despite his more interesting than most tales Davis did need some persuading to put pen to paper as he explained, “I have read a lot of football books and to be honest most of them are not really that interesting. They tend to be factual accounts of played here, scored here etc so I was not sure it would be any different.”
“I have told the story about my life from being a young boy all the way to living up at Wester Ross and hopefully I have not bored anyone, well not bored them totally. The people of Wester Ross, where I still live, seen to like it and I have to keep asking for batches of 25 to be sent up from Edinburgh for the demand up here.”
Davis has also attended fans’ events in Glasgow and Kirkintilloch to personally sign copies of his book and he said, “They were fantastic events and it is great that we are also helping the profile of Erskine Hospital as well.”
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