Pat Stanton still bears the scar after his encounter with world great
But one game in particular left him with more than memories after an encounter with one of the finest players in the world.
Speaking on an emotional night when the East Stand was officially renamed the Pat Stanton Stand in his honour, he recalled: 'We played a friendly against Real Madrid here and that was something,'
'You had Ferenc Puskás and a lot of real good players. That was tremendous.
'I can remember I wasn't long in the Hibs team at the time. I went in for a tackle in the midfield against Puskás. But he came in a bit late – and he went over the ball, and he caught my ankle.
'We beat them that night, we beat them 2-0 and sitting in the dressing room after the game, Tom McNiven got the bandages out.
'I said: 'Where are you going with that?' He said: 'To sort your ankle, to wipe it.
'I said: 'No, I don't want anybody to touch that.' He said it needed cleaning.
'I said: 'Well, what I want, Tom, is to walk along Niddrie Mains Road tomorrow morning and I'll stop strangers and say: 'You know who did this?
'I've still got the mark on my ankle, still got it. I didn't want anybody to heal it; I wanted to wander about ruining my mother's good carpet!'
Stanton who led the team in the 1972 League Cup final victory over Jock Stein's Celtic in addition to two Drybrough Cups admitted to getting emotional at the sight of his name up on the rebranded east stand. 'The only time my name was out there, it was in the referee's book' he joked.
'It's tremendous, it really is. I said to my family: 'I'll still talk to you!' But it's great, really terrific.
'I've been here a long time, and you get something like that, and you think of all the lads you played with. It's very humble about the whole thing because it's great.'
Real Madrid was just one of the European giants that graced the Easter Road turf during Pat's tenure.
He was part of the side that hammered Naples 5-0 and Sporting Lisbon 6-1, beat Bob Paisley's Liverpool 1-0 and lost on penalties to Don Revie's Leeds United. He also scored against Italian giants Juventus in a 4-2 defeat.
Ladbrokes Scottish Premiereship – Hibernian v Celtic.
Easter Road Stadium,
28/09/2019. Pic shows: Hibs legend, Pat Stanton, waves to the crowd before the start as Hibs play host to Celtic at Easter Road Stadium, Edinburgh.
Credit: Ian Jacobs
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