David Halliday will join the AFC Hall of Fame after being nominated for the AFC Heritage Trust 2019 posthumous award. He was the first manager to guide Aberdeen to a major trophy when the club won the Scottish Cup in 1947 and, eight years later, led them to a first ever Scottish title.

The 2019 Hall of Fame will yet again be a memorable occasion for AFC supporters, sponsors and partners alike, including a 3 course meal with a Q & A session to follow with our inductees at the Chester Hotel on Thursday 21st November.

Places for the event are priced at £109+VAT per person. For more information or to book please call 01224 650434 or email commercial@afc.co.uk.

The Red Matchday team look back at his distinguished career and highlight why he was so deserving of the award:

Dave Halliday had been a prolific forward as a player with Queen of the South, St Mirren, Dundee, Sunderland, Arsenal, Manchester City and Clapton Orient in the 1920s and 1930s. He has the claim to fame of being one of only a few players who have been top scorer in Scotland and England.

He eventually joined Yeovil as a player/manager in his first coaching post.

He applied for the Aberdeen position and was chosen from around 100 hopefuls; his arrival in the North-east was shrouded in mystery as he was whisked down to Pittodrie for talks on his arrival in January 1938. Halliday had come to the Dons’ attention with his work with Yeovil and his last game in charge of them was in an FA Cup tie against Manchester United at Old Trafford.

Halliday had led the non-league club to several giant-killing feats, but they eventually went down in Manchester, allowing Halliday the chance to accept the Aberdeen position.

In April 1938, Halliday signed 19-year-old George Hamilton from his former club, Queen of the South. This would be as shrewd a signing as Halliday would ever make. Gentleman George would show himself as a player of genuine class. His attacking danger with either foot offered individual creativity in abundance, but channelled into a team plan.

Halliday was very much from the ‘old school’ of football managers.

Indeed, the only time he spent at Pittodrie was a brief spell on a Thursday as the players had a full practice bounce game ahead of the next fixture. The next time Halliday would appear was for the game itself.

Through the week, he entrusted the training and conditioning of his players to trainers Donald Colman, Bob McDermid and Dave Shaw. Halliday would spend his time carrying out administrative tasks and looking into transfer targets.

Although the war in Europe was to prevent Halliday from his building plans, on resumption he wasted little time in becoming the first manager at Aberdeen to bring major success for the first time, thus securing Halliday’s place in Aberdeen folklore.

During WW2, no Scottish FA Cup competition was played. The Southern Football League then operating in Scotland arranged a competition called the Southern Football League Cup. An obvious difference compared to the Scottish Cup was that the initial stages were based on small groups of teams. The winners of each section would then progress to the knockout phase. The Southern League Cup’s last season, 1945/46, included teams from the now defunct North Eastern Football League. This included Halliday’s Aberdeen who defeated Rangers 3-2 in the final at Hampden on May 11th 1946. Such was the success of the tournament that from 1946/47 the Scottish Football League Cup was launched with the format used in the war.

A year later, Aberdeen finally won the Scottish Cup for the first time with a 2-1 win over Hibernian. At Hampden on April 19th 1947, Halliday’s team won the Scottish Cup before an attendance of 82,140. The inspirational George Hamilton equalised against Hibernian who opened the scoring in the opening minute. Stan Williams scored the winner.

Aberdeen also reached the inaugural League Cup final that season beating Hearts 6-2 in the semi-final. In the final, they lost out to Rangers.

Halliday knew that his side was an ageing one and that a new team had to be built.

Despite flirting with relegation on a couple of occasions, that new Aberdeen side under Halliday went on reach successive Scottish Cup finals in 1953 and 1954. Halliday returned to the Scottish Cup final in 1953 with a series of ties that went to replays. Motherwell drew 5-5 at Pittodrie before being blitzed 6-1 at Fir Park.

Next was a fine result against the still excellent Hibernian side of the era. Third Lanark were knocked out in the semis in another replay before the Dons lost 1-0 to Rangers in a final replay. Aberdeen went to the Scottish Cup final again the season after.

A second round trip to Duns produced an avalanche win (8-0). Next were two wins against Edinburgh opposition, 3-1 away to Hibs and 3-0 at home to Hearts. The win against the Jambos was witnessed by Aberdeen’s record home crowd, 45,061.

The semi-final draw brought a game against Rangers at Hampden. Halliday’s team returned north with a stunning 6-0 win against the Ibrox club in the bag. The final brought the opportunity of a Glasgow double to match the Edinburgh double from earlier in the cup run.

It was not to be as Sean Fallon hit the winner for Celtic to take the league and cup double with a 2-1 win. The official attendance was another of Hampden’s gargantuan crowds, 130,060.

Despite suffering defeat in both finals, Halliday steeled his team for the challenges that were ahead and in 1955 he became the first Aberdeen manager to take the Dons to a league Championship.
That year brought ambitions of a league and cup double.

Rangers were beaten in the Scottish Cup for the second season running. Next, Hearts were vanquished 2-0 at home in a replay in the quarter-final.

Aberdeen were 2-1 up in the semi-final against Clyde before Scotland left winger Tommy Ring scored his second of the game to equalise in the 89th minute. Clyde were victorious in a 1-0 replay win, just as they were against Celtic in the final.

Five days after the Scottish Cup replay exit, the Dons visited Clyde in the league.

Archie Glen’s successful penalty was the game’s only goal against Pat Travers’ side. The Dons clinched the title that day with two games to spare and finished the season three points ahead of Celtic.

Halliday’s title winners were a team engineered as per the Herbert Chapman template, the Arsenal manager that Halliday played under; well organised, methodical football based on tough defence and quick forwards.

After becoming the first manager to lift the Scottish Championship with Aberdeen all appeared to be looking good for Halliday at the Dons, but this was not the case.

Firstly, there was conflict when the club refused to pay his players an additional bonus for winning the league. Secondly, the first season of competitive European club football was about to begin. The competition was officially named, “The European Champions Clubs’ Cup”, the European Cup.

It has been documented that Aberdeen declined an invitation to participate but that was certainly not true. Dave Halliday was a visionary and he wanted to bring European competition to Scotland but Aberdeen found themselves on the outside look in as some of Europe’s finest got the European Cup off to a great start.

As league champions that year Aberdeen were now keen on the new competition that had been mooted for several months. The competition first came to the fore in January 1955 when all the leading football nations were invited to nominate a side to play in the new competition at a meeting in Paris.

The SFA were not in attendance at that inaugural meeting, suggesting that the governing body were adopting a lukewarm approach to the new concept.

It is difficult to defend the attitude that prevailed at the time; if Scotland had learned anything from the World Cup in 1954 than it was surely that the country had fallen way behind some of the emerging nations.

Instead of embracing new horizons, the European Cup was given scant attention from the mainstream of the game in Scotland.

The respective league champions from the competing countries would compete for the cup, but only from season 1955/56. Quite rightly, Aberdeen expected to be put forward to represent Scotland. As league champions, they had emerged as the best combine in the land and their involvement was keenly anticipated. However, Harry Swan, the Hibernian chairman, had been very much involved in the initial talks and was keen to see Scottish involvement. The fact that a loophole in the initial rules allowed any side to be put forward meant that there was bad news for Aberdeen.

Swan was also the President of the SFA and it can be assumed that his forceful lobbying pushed his own side forward into the first year of the European Cup. Hibernian had finished fifth in the table with Aberdeen out of sight on their Edinburgh rivals. Aberdeen maintained a diplomatic silence throughout the whole affair; they had been badly treated and even the SFA glossed over the matter in their minutes taken at their meeting in July:

“The secretary reported having attended a meeting of the Executive Committee of UEFA in Paris on 21st June 1955, at which its principal business was the Trophy for European Associations. Hibernian FC, whose acceptance was intimated, applied for permission to take part and the committee decided in the circumstances not to exercise their right to nominate a club but to allow Hibernian FC to compete this season.”

The SFA had the power to put forward the league champions but chose to ignore the Dons’ claims and allowed Hibernian to go forward to compete. All of this was kept away from the players and the supporters.

For the record Eddie Turnbull became the first British player to score a goal in the European Cup and the Edinburgh side reached the semi-finals, getting knocked out by French side Reim. They in turn were beaten in the final 4-3 by Real Madrid. Amongst the scorers for the Spanish side was Alfredo Di Stéfano, who would manager Real against Aberdeen in 1983.

On reflection, Aberdeen were treated poorly. It was on the back of this news that Halliday would leave Aberdeen to take over as manager at Leicester City on July 1st 1955.

This move was a bombshell for Aberdeen and totally unexpected.

Why would Halliday leave after 17 years in charge?

He had achieved what many observers thought impossible and taken Aberdeen to their first league title.

The structure of the club was sound, there was money in the bank – with the salary cap in English football, Aberdeen could compete with most club’s in the UK financially – and the Dons stood on the threshold of further success.

Asked if the European snub and players’ bonus dispute had any bearing on Halliday’s decision, goalkeeper Reggie Morrison answered, “Without doubt. Halliday was a man of great integrity and a true gentleman. I was convinced that those difficulties had a bearing on his decision to leave.

“The fact that he was also refused a modest pay rise after winning the championship had a lot to do with his decision. It was a great disappointment to all of us who looked upon Dave Halliday for guidance and he was someone we respected.”

Publicly Halliday cited the opportunity to take Leicester back to the First Division in England as the motivating force behind his move.

Writing in the Sunday Post some two years after his move Halliday commented, “My best friends were shocked to learn that I was leaving Aberdeen. I was well established at Pittodrie, we had come through some difficult times and I had helped put Aberdeen on the football map by taking them to the championship. What more could I want?

“A lot of this was true and I was happy in Aberdeen, but he is a poor man who ceases to have ambition and is not prepared to take a risk. I did not apply for the post but when I was invited south to discuss the matter, I mentioned this to Aberdeen chairman William Mitchell who agreed I should go and talk to Leicester.”

He managed Leicester City to promotion to the top division in England from winning the 1956-57 Football League Second Division.

Halliday left Leicester in 1958 and later returned to the Aberdeen area and scouted for Leicester City in North-east Scotland. He died on 5 January 1970, aged 68.

 

In conclusion, David Halliday was AFC’s most successful manager before the arrival of Alex Ferguson.

Only Halliday and Ferguson have managed Aberdeen to be Scottish champions.

Halliday had appointed Davie Shaw as coach and on his departure, Shaw was promoted to manager.

Three months after Halliday left, Aberdeen won the 1955/56 League Cup and went on to finish second in the league.

While not playing in Europe, Aberdeen did play England’s champions in a friendly at Pittodrie in September, beating Chelsea 4-3.

Reading too much into friendlies is fraught with risk but it seems reasonable that this result combined with the semi-final position achieved by Hibernian indicates Aberdeen would likely have been competitive had they played in that first European Cup.

We will never know what this team below under the management of David Halliday might have achieved?