Alan Gilzean hit the headlines 60 years ago when he netted seven goals in a 10-2 mauling of luckless Queen of the South at Dens Park.
The Dundee striker’s seven goals against the Doonhamers on December 1 1962 equalled the club record for a single game set by Albert Juliussen 15 years earlier.
Gillie was still one adrift of Jimmy McGrory’s Scottish record of eight for Celtic but what stopped the Scotland international from being more ruthless in front of goal?
And how close did the 10-2 win come to being wiped from the record books because of the fog that made the all-white Dundee team disappear from sight towards the end?
Let’s go back to 1962.
Dundee were league champions
Dundee’s mediocre league form at the start of the 1962/63 title defence was in stark contrast to the brilliance being shown in the European Cup run.
The Dark Blues defeated Cologne 8-5 on aggregate in September 1962 and were drawn against Sporting Lisbon’s famous green-and-white hoops in the ‘first round proper’.
Bob Shankly’s men won 4-2 over two legs in October 1962 to take their place in the last eight of the European Cup before returning to domestic duties in November.
A 2-1 home win against Airdrie was followed by defeats in Glasgow to Partick Thistle and Third Lanark, either side of a scoreless stalemate at Dens against Celtic.
Up next were Queen of the South before a crowd of 12,000 at Dens with Dundee sporting an all-white change strip to avoid clashing with the Palmerston Parkers.
Dundee: Slater, Hamilton, Cox, Ryden, Ure, Wishart, Smith, Penman, Cousin, Gilzean, Houston.
Queen of the South: Farm, Morrison, Kerr, Irving, Rugg, Murphy, Hannigan, Martin, Frye, Anderson, Murray.
The Dens Park floodlights were switched on five minutes before the game kicked off and the spectators who ventured out into the foggy conditions were rewarded with 12 goals.
Gilzean scored his first in 90 seconds from a long ball sent through by Bobby Wishart, although the away side were back on level terms almost immediately.
Queen’s won a penalty directly from the restart, which was converted by Murphy.
Dundee went ahead on 12 minutes through Gilzean.
Queen’s goalkeeper George Farm saved Andy Penman’s shot with his feet.
Gilzean went for the rebound and scored but he collided accidentally with Farm at the same time, which led to the goalkeeper being stretchered off with a head injury.
Farm was also Queen’s player-manager so it was a double-blow.
With no substitutes in those days, the away side were now down to 10-men.
Right-back Morrison took the yellow jersey and Dundee went three-up on 20 minutes when Gilzean headed his hat-trick from 15 yards following Gordon Smith’s cross.
Number four for Gilzean, coming on 28 minutes, was a 25-yard left-foot strike and things might have got worse for the Doonhamers but Doug Houston struck the bar.
Andy Penman scored a fifth from inside the box on 33 minutes.
Dundee were threatening to run up a cricket score before the half-time whistle but stand-in keeper Morrison was doing his best to keep the scoreline respectable.
Queen’s pulled a goal back just before the interval when Martin headed home Hannigan’s cross for what was a consolation even at that early stage.
Gilzean was not to be outdone.
A minute later the Dark Blues hitman scored his fifth goal and Dundee’s sixth after a cross from the right was headed on by his strike partner, Alan Cousin.
Gillie completed his double hat-trick in injury time, following good work by Penman, and roused hopes of breaking the eight-goal record set by McGrory in 1928.
He scored his seventh on 55 minutes.
But there it ended.
Centre-half George Ryden and winger Doug Houston completed the 10-2 scoreline with goals in 72 and 73 minutes, before a lull in the scoring towards the finish.
It had been a one-sided contest all the way.
Thickening fog towards the end
Now the 10-man Queen’s wasted time to keep the total down to a respectable 10 while the thickening fog made the all-white Dundee become indistinct shadows.
At times it was impossible to see the linesman on the far side from the stand and there was speculation as to whether the weather would rob Dundee of their biggest win.
That’s probably why the narrative of the second-half amid the thickening blanket merited little more than a few paragraphs in that evening’s Sporting Post!
Somehow the game kept going until the 90th minute though.
Later, the predatory Gilzean went to visit stricken keeper Farm at Dundee Royal Infirmary and declared himself embarrassed at matching Bert Juliussen’s 1947 record in such circumstances.
For his part, the popular ‘Julie’ – part of the Dundee side that won back-to-back Scottish League B Division championships – had exceeded his own six-goal haul in a record-breaking 10-0 win at Alloa with seven in an identical scoreline against Dunfermline in the next league game at Dens in March 1947!
This was nothing new for the strapping Juliussen, who had previously scored seven in the first-half for Dundee against a British Army Select.
To even things up, he swapped sides for the second half, though in only managing a modest six for the opposition, he was unable to retrieve the deficit!
So what happened next that season?
Dundee struggled to kick on domestically despite the 10-2 win, although things were different in the European Cup, where they got all the way to the semi-final.
The Dark Blues completed their season with a credible no-scoring draw with the new league champions, Rangers, at Dens to finish a disappointing ninth in the table.
Many years later, my Evening Telegraph colleague John Brown interviewed Gillie at a function and asked him about that specific game against Queen’s in 1962.
Gillie told him: “Going into that particular game, I had no idea of any records.
“I was just doing my job of trying to score goals when given the opportunity.
“What I do remember about the game was the contribution from centre-forward Alan Cousin, who helped set up many of the goals.
“I think I spent the last half-an-hour or so trying to set him up to score a goal.
“I definitely had a number of chances to increase my personal tally.
“However, I kept looking to see if I could get the ball to Alan.”
The King of White Hart Lane
The Coupar Angus man’s time at Dundee ended in December 1964.
Sunderland and Torino had both wanted him but it was Tottenham Hotspur who won the race for his signature and paid a new Scottish record fee of £72,500.
Gilzean, who had netted a Dens Park club record of 169 goals in 190 appearances, went on to form a devastating partnership with England striker Jimmy Greaves.
He was part of Spurs’ FA Cup-winning side against Chelsea at Wembley in 1967.
He also gained two League Cup successes and a Uefa Cup win before retiring in 1974.
He was as much idolised at White Hart Lane as he was at Dens.
Gilzean, of course, still holds almost every Dundee goalscoring record, including most career goals, most goals in a season, most European goals and most hat-tricks.
He died at the age of 79 in 2018.
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