The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

. . And so to the back cover and Hibs great Pat Stanton. Pat played over 400 games for Hibs from 1963 to 1976 and was the captain of the famous Turnbull Tornadoes. The Hibs team under manager Eddie Turnbull flourished in the early 70’s with players like John Brownlie, John Blackley, Alan Gordon and Jimmy O’Rourke, although major trophies eluded them they were League runners – up twice as well as losing out in the Scottish Cup final in 1971-72 but they did win the League Cup in the 72-73 season.
Pat played for Scotland 16 times, his Scotland career began in a 3 nil defeat to the Netherlands at Hampden. I have no idea what the circumstances were but for this game there was no Anglos included at all, nor Celtic players. The team was; Bobby Ferguson (Kilmarnock), John Greig (Rangers) capt., David Provan (Rangers), Pat Stanton (Hibs), Ronnie McKinnon (Rangers), David Smith (Aberdeen), Willie Henderson (Rangers), Andy Penman( Dundee), Jim Scott (Hibs), Willie Wallace (Hearts) and Willie Johnston (Rangers).
David Smith, Andy Penman and Jim Scott were the other debutants that night. Smith would win one more cap but Penman and Scott never made it to two although Pat would have to wait ’til 1969 for his next cap.
Pat would play in all six qualifying games for the 1972 European Championships against Belgium, Portugal and Denmark although we won all our home games, we also slumped to three away game defeats including an embarrassing 1 nil defeat to Denmark, where Finn Laudrup, father of Michael and Brian scored the only goal.
Pat captained Scotland on three occasions; in 1971 in a one nil defeat to the USSR in Moscow after Bobby Moncur who had captained the side the previous seven games dropped out. Similarly, he captained the side again when Billy Bremner was unavailable in May ’73 for the Home Internationals against Wales and Northern Ireland, dropping out for the England game with Bremner returning.
His final game was a World Cup ’74 warm up against host nation West Germany, which ended 2-1 for Germany with Dalgish scoring. Fellow Hibs player Erich Scahedler played his only Scotland game that night too, but unlike Pat, he was selected for the World Cup squad.
Finally around this time there was a lot of players called Pat; in Scotland there was Pat Gardner (Dunfermline and Dundee United player), Pat McCluskey at Celtic, whilst down south there was Pat Jennings, Pat Rice and Scot Pat Crerand. However, despite extensive research I have been unable to find trace of a player called Pat McGroin.