The Smiths

[jagfaelivi]

It brought back quite a few memories when I read Robert Reid's bit on the official site on a match with Queens Park from 1956. I was still a couple of years short of my first Jags match but the man who was instrumental in starting me off on the Jaggy trail was playing that day and his cousin was in goal, too. I'm talking of George Smith our then twenty year old centre who had just banged in a couple of goals to get us to the League Cup semi in a match against Cowdenbeath.

 

George was like lightning and was a regular winner at sprint meetings and I'm sure he bagged 149 goals for us all told. Can you imagine what a twenty year old scoring goals like that now would be worth?

 

I can report he is still going strong at age eighty and would pass for twenty years younger quite easily. The goalie, his cousin Willie, passed on a couple of years ago, though.

[lady-isobel-barnett]

It brought back quite a few memories when I read Robert Reid's bit on the official site on a match with Queens Park from 1956. I was still a couple of years short of my first Jags match but the man who was instrumental in starting me off on the Jaggy trail was playing that day and his cousin was in goal, too. I'm talking of George Smith our then twenty year old centre who had just banged in a couple of goals to get us to the League Cup semi in a match against Cowdenbeath.

 

George was like lightning and was a regular winner at sprint meetings and I'm sure he bagged 149 goals for us all told. Can you imagine what a twenty year old scoring goals like that now would be worth?

 

I can report he is still going strong at age eighty and would pass for twenty years younger quite easily. The goalie, his cousin Willie, passed on a couple of years ago, though.

 

Think I mentioned before but I hear thru a fellow Jags fan that George plays a mean hand at bridge these days. I've also been told he's still as fit as fiddle.

[jagfaelivi]

George was quite a boy! No drink or smoking in his life though there was a wee interest in gambling and the opposite gender when he was a youngster.

 

Heard somebody on here who said that his wife's favourite player back in the day was George Smith - good looking man with a flashing smile. He is actually ten years to the day older than me and my boyhood hero. His dad took me to my first Firhill match, a 3-0 reverse to Airdrie!! Look up his record of goals against Celtic, a barrowload!

 

Mind you the 'tic were not the team that the subsequent rewriters of history suggested they always have been. I looked up their league record between the end of WW2 and 1965 when Stein came on the scene and they only won the league ONCE in that period. They were more than once as low as eighth and even eleventh once. You would think now listening to the media and all their supporters that a league win was something they have always done. History proves this to be rubbish. Just like the "massive" crowds on the other side of the city when Greig was the manager. Did we not play them there and the crowd was as low as 2000 odd?

 

Anyway George Smith also won one of the big sprints when at Thistle. Must have been frightening bearing down on you though probably a better runner than a footballer!

 

Sorry if I've got off topic.

[robphil]

many thanks for some happy memories. george smith was one of my boyhood heroes. we had some truly great players in the late 50s and early 60s and george was right up there with the best of them...

[lady-isobel-barnett]

Sorry if I've got off topic.

 

Eh, it's your thread.

[Winter of '63]

I was 6 month's old at the time of the Queens Park game referred to in Robert Reid's piece.My father was a Queens supporter but I became a Thistle fan at a very young age and he took me to my first game at Firhill in November 1962 - a 3-0 victory over Airdrie. George Smith played on the left wing that day.

 

I was too young to have any appreciation of him as a player but I do remember him as a regular match reporter on BBC Scotland's Saturday Teatime TV Show in the late Sixties. Glad to hear he is still fit & well.

 

The last football I watched with my father was the TV coverage of the Tennents Sixes in 1993 a few weeks before he passed away. Thistle won the Trophy and my Dad was delighted to see big Paul McLaughlan, who started his career with Queens, crashing in a pile of goals for us.

 

Good memories - I might just go to Firhill tomorrow