The Thistle Archive

Thistle were able to field their strongest eleven but it was still an enormous task. The opponents – Hearts – had won the League title the previous season, but Thistle had also won their division, so champion faced champion. Thistle, up against a strong wind, played an early form of route one football with backs and halfs sending the ball quickly to their forwards. Robert Gray scored the first Thistle goal. However, it was the third goal that drew a huge ovation from the crowd of 7,000. Captain Willie Paul, the oldest man and the only amateur on the pitch, took a shot from long range that beat the keeper. Thistle held on after a late rally from Hearts to take both points. It was an amazing win brought about more by hard work than by skill and ability, but amazing all the same. The reaction in Patrick to the victory was unbelievable. Residents who had hung out of tenement windows watching the large crowd throng the streets before the game now watched them leave Meadowside singing and dancing. The newspapers were full of the story of a well-known Thistle follower who announced he was going to start at the nearest close and insisted he was going to visit every tenant in entire burgh to shake their hands. There were rumours that the Thistle committee had commissioned a statue of Willie Paul to commemorate his goal. And so it came to be that Thistle prevailed in a famous battle of the Champions. Top Flight Victory # 1 was secured. With no goal average system in place Thistle went straight to the joint top place in Scottish Football on their first day in the Top 10.

ptearlyyears.net

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