Football bad boys: the superlative Willie Hamilton drove his teammates to distraction

IT was Hogmanay 1964 and Willie Hamilton and his teammates were gathered together, sipping champagne in the lounge of the old Scotia Hotel.

The forward had established himself as a crowd favourite at Tynecastle, but now he was preparing to return to Hearts as a Hibs player in the New Year's Day derby.

With the match in mind, most of his teammates barely touched the drink in front of them and disappeared to bed around 10pm.

But not Willie Hamilton . . .

"The chairman came in with a crate of champagne at about 9:30pm and put it on the table," recalls Eric Stevenson, now 66, who played alongside Willie in Hibs' forward line. "We just had a wee sip and everybody went to bed – apart from Willie Hamilton.

"In the morning, the trainer Tom McNiven came down the stairs and said, 'That bugger Willie!'

"We had left the crate in the lounge, so Willie must have drank five or six bottles of it – he couldn't stand. I wouldn't talk to him, I was in the huff. Willie and I were good pals and we liked a wee swallie together.

"He played in the derby that day, and we won 1-0. He took on three men and hit this ball that rocketed into the net. Off the park he said, 'Stevenson – who got you the (win] bonus?'"

Those who watched Hearts and Hibs play throughout the Sixties recall a superlative player who regularly tortured opposition defences. That his drinking and wayward ways are almost as legendary today as his ability on the park perhaps helps explain why he is not more widely celebrated as a footballing genius.

His ability, though, outstripped such national institutions as Jim Baxter and Jimmy Johnstone.

And don't take the word of the Tynecastle and Easter Road faithfuls for that, just listen to no less an authority than Jock Stein, who once described Willie as the best player he'd ever seen.

"People such as wee Jimmy and Baxter each had that special thing they did brilliantly," mused the former Hibs and Celtic manager, "but Willie could do it all. He could match anyone in the game with his speed, stamina and shooting."

Stein's approach to tactics while Willie was in his team perhaps best sums up his attitude to his unpredictable genius.

"I remember a time after training when Jock Stein brought out the tactics board and said: 'Right, we are going to talk tactics – Willie, you go and have a shower'," recalls former teammate Jim Scott, now 68, a Hibs centre forward from 1958 to 1967.

"That was because on the park, everybody played around Willie Hamilton."

Born in Airdrie, on 16 February, 1938, Willie was a teenage prodigy whose rare talent was first spotted by the future England manager Joe Mercer, who signed him for Sheffield United.

Tragically, he died at the age of 38, shortly after his playing days came to an end. He had emigrated to Canada and returned to his first trade as a bricklayer, and his glittering past was unknown to most of his colleagues.

Hearts and Hibs fans, though, will be forever grateful that as a young man he failed to settle in the north of England, and, homesick for Scotland, signed for Hearts in June 1962. The transfer fee was an incredible bargain at £2,500.

He made an immediate impact, scoring an amazing goal on his debut against Dundee. Visiting members of the Belgrade State Opera are said to have sprung to their feet in the main stand at Tynecastle to applaud a fellow artist.

He went on to set up the winning goal when Hearts beat Kilmarnock to lift the League Cup at Hampden later that year.

Despite his mercurial skills, that would remain perhaps the highlight of his career, although the days he tormented Real Madrid at Easter Road and "nutmegged" Jim Baxter – in two games within a week of each other – are part of Edinburgh football folklore. He won a solitary Scotland cap, when the man who signed him for Hibs, Jock Stein, picked him to play against Finland in 1965.

His love of alcohol (Bacardi was a particular favourite), aversion to training and often chaotic lifestyle perhaps helped seal his fate as an "unfulfilled talent".

Continuing to live in Airdrie while he played in Edinburgh, teammates recall a habit of sleeping off drinking sessions in his car, before heading straight to training the next day.

"During training when we were running laps, he would jump over the wall to miss a lap and then join on at the end," recalls former Hibs forward Stan Vincent, now 66.

"Willie's best pal in the Hibs team was John Park and he was in hospital at one point getting an operation. One day after training we went up to visit him and at training the next morning, Willie still had the same clothes on as the day before. I said to him 'where have you been?' He had spent the night in the hospital drinking with John Park!

"He was just a one-off who we will never see the likes of again."

The story that he carelessly bent in half a silver salver he was presented with after scoring seven goals for Hibs in a single match, during a pre-season tour in Ottawa, is apocryphal. Teammates, though, recall seeing him somehow squeeze the trophy into a tiny holdall in which he carried all his belongings on the trip.

Willie's drinking and superior skills have perhaps inevitably led to comparisons with fellow former Hibee George Best. Stan, though, resists the comparison.

"I would compare Willie to Denis Law, rather than George Best," he says. "If Willie had looked after himself, people would talk about him in the same way as Denis Law."

Former Hearts striker Donald Ford recalls him as peerless on the pitch. "Young people today really have no conception of what we're talking about," he says. "Willie was indescribable. He had this uncanny knack of not looking at the ball. He instinctively knew where it was to the inch. When he was in space, he would collect the ball and hit a 30-yard pass without a glance. At other times he would be boxed in by three defenders. Yet within five seconds he'd have wriggled away from them all because he could mesmerise opponents."

The last word is perhaps best left to former Hibs star Peter Cormack, 62, attempting to sum up what Willie meant to his fellow pros. "Willie Hamilton was a world class player to us. Willie and George Best were both exceptional talents, but they both had the same problems. They both had a destruct button. They could have played in any world eleven and wouldn't have been out of place," he says.

"Willie might have let people down outside football, but he never did on the park."