There's No Substitute...

If you look at the back page of the programme for this Saturday's Hearts v Rangers game, you will see the squad names for both Hearts and Rangers. Hearts have more than thirty names in their squad and I suspect the team from Govan will have a similar number. While only eleven players can start the game for each team there will be the usual plethora of players kicking their heels on the substitutes’ bench, eagerly waiting for their disappointment at not starting the game to subside and seize their chance to come on at some point in the game.


Once upon a time, there were no substitutes. That’s right young ‘uns - none. By the time I started understanding football in the mid 1970s they were such an established part of the game there were emerging players soon to be known to all as Super Sub, and the idea that football had once been just eleven against eleven was consigned to the history books.

Initially, substitutes were used only in the event that injury required a player to leave the field and not return. A popular theory is this evolved as a result pop superstar Elton John’s uncle, Roy Dwight who broke his leg whilst playing for Nottingham Forest after just half an hour of the 1959 FA Cup Final. Forest were ahead at the time and clung on to their lead but the consensus of opinion was that such a showcase game had been spoiled and that such a scenario should not be allowed to happen again. Initially there was just one substitution allowed but it wasn’t long before managers began replacing players for tactical reasons.

Here’s a question to ask your mates in the pub tonight - who was the first tactical substitute in Scottish football? It was a young Archie Gemmill who replaced Jim Clunie for St. Mirren in a Scottish League Cup tie against Clyde in August 1966. It’s an education reading this blog...

More than four decades on substitutes aren’t just part of the game - they’re now an essential element. How many times do you see a team in an important away match snatch the lead with a breakaway goal and then replace the goalscorer with a strapping, no-nonsense defender who couldn’t trap a bag of cement but will kick a nifty centre forward into the middle of next week? Of course, there’s the other side of the coin where a team finds themselves 4-2 down at the end of ninety minutes with just injury time to play. The team in front - let’s call them Hibernian - are already counting their win bonuses when a diminutive substitute - let’s call him Graham Weir - scores twice in four additional minutes to rescue a point from a game in which his team had been apparently dead and buried. There are ‘super subs’ and there are ‘superlative subs!’ (it’s hard to believe nearly eight years have passed since that memorable New Year Edinburgh derby)

Twenty years ago, Celtic had a striker called Dariusz Dziekanowski. On one occasion, the Pole was replaced by Joe Miller only for Miller himself to be substituted not long after, giving rise to the wisecracking comment that Celtic had two Polish strikers - Dziekanowski and Joe Milleronandoffski…

Substitutes being substituted doesn’t happen very often although I do recall when Tommy McLean was Hearts manager the former Rangers winger putting on Tommy Harrison during a league cup defeat to St. Johnstone at Tynecastle - only to haul the youngster off after about ten minutes for no apparent reason (no Polish players for Hearts then so the gag doesn’t work quite as well…) Hearts lost that tie 4-2 after being two goals ahead at half-time so perhaps panic had set in…

These days clubs have sizeable squads and the days of winning a league championship with a squad of fourteen players - as Dundee United did in 1983 - have long gone. Substitutions can be crucial with the aim of adding fresh impetus to a game. You only have to look at Hearts opening game of the season against St. Johnstone in August to see how the introduction of new strikers Kevin Kyle and Stephen Elliott gave the team and the home support a huge lift as Hearts strove for the win.

While some people of my generation can take issue with the ever-changing face of football, this is one rule change that has been for the betterment of the game over the last four decades - although there was one occasion that was the obvious exception. If only Dundee hadn’t brought on Albert Kidd against Hearts in May 1986.…