The party appeared to be over when the Pars were relegated after their first season in the top flight, but Leishman and Dunfermline then achieved something they had not managed first time around. They won the First Division championship, beating Jim Duffy’s Falkirk in a nail-biting finish to secure the league’s only promotion place.
Dunfermline needed a point at home to Meadowbank Thistle on the final day of the season. “We were 1-0 down and we knew Falkirk were winning at Forfar,” remembers Leishman. “I had been told that if we didn’t go up I would have to release seven or eight players. If we made it, I would be able to add to the squad and that was always at the back of my mind. Then with 20 minutes left the ball went through their centre-half’s legs and John Watson went through and hit it low past the keeper.” The draw, combined with an eventual 2-2 result from Station Park, meant the Fifers secured the title by two points.
Watson, like Ray Sharp and the late Norrie McCathie, who is not in this picture, had been there from the start. Others, such as Bobby Smith, had been signed for survival in Scotland’s top flight but ended up First Division champions. It was a team built at a cost. Promising players like Ian McCall and Craig Robertson had been sold to add depth to the squad, but the rebuilt Dunfermline got up and stayed up under Leishman.
The manager, despite his best laid plans, got soaked amid the celebrations at East End Park. “We were going to these functions after the game,” he recalls, “and I thought something might happen so I had another suit. They threw me in the bath once and we had the champagne, then I got changed into my club suit, but they came to get me, and they threw me in the bath again. I went out that night in my jeans.” [The numbers refer to a photograph that is not carried on the website.]
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1 Graeme Robertson A full-back who could play on either side of the pitch, Robertson signed from Queen of the South for £2,000 before the club’s debut season in the Premier Division.
However, he was sold to Partick Thistle in 1990 as Leishman brought a young Jackie McNamara through at right-back. Robertson also played for Ayr United and is now the head of youth development at Livingston
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2 John Watson Watson scored goals for Leishman in every division, ending up with 72 from 195 games, none more important than his equaliser here. Having initially turned down Dunfermline to return to the Far East, he was signed in 1983 from Hong Kong Rovers “for £500, a pint of Tartan Special for his girlfriend and a Guinness for him,” according to his former manager at East End Park. He later played for Fulham and Airdrie before becoming a coach at Berwick Rangers. Watson is now a baggage handler at Edinburgh airport
3 Stuart Beedie A wide midfielder, he was at St Johnstone and Dundee United before joining Dunfermline from Hibs in 1986. “He was the quickest player I had seen from a standing start,” says Leishman. “He could go from zero to a sprint very quickly, that was how he beat defenders.” He was sold to Dundee for £50,000 after this season and also played for East Fife and Montrose before emigrating to Australia where he played and coached for several clubs, including Wollongong Wolves. He is still Down Under, working as a private investigator
4 Ray Sharp Sharp was the only member of the Dunfermline team that won the BP Youth Cup in 1988 to make it as a first-team regular. Leishman remembered him from the previous season, when he missed a shoot-out penalty in the same competition. “He was distraught, he wanted to pack it in,” he says. “We talked him out of it, he won the BP Cup the next year and won the First Division with us the following season.” He was sold to Preston North End for £100,000 in 1995, returning to East End Park the following year before playing briefly for Forfar Athletic
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5 Jim Leishman Raised in the Fife town of Lochgelly, Leishman was a full-back for Dunfermline for three years until a leg break in 1974 all but ended his playing career. He managed junior sides Oakley United and Kelty Hearts before coaching at Cowdenbeath, and was youth and reserve coach at Dunfermline before progressing to manager, aged 29, in 1983. He achieved successive promotions in his second and third seasons and, after relegation from the Premier Division, this was arguably his finest hour. He resigned in the summer of 1990 after falling out with the board, despite keeping the club in the top flight. Around 3,000 supporters protested at his departure. Leishman then managed Inverness Thistle and Montrose before becoming the last manager of Meadowbank Thistle, and the first of the reincarnation of that club, Livingston, who he took from the Third Division to the Premier in various management positions. He then returned to East End Park as general manager, but with David Hay’s departure as manager last May, Leishman returned to the dugout in a caretaker capacity and masterminded the club’s escape from relegation. He was then handed the job again on a permanent basis
6 Bobby Smith The veteran defender was recruited for the Premier campaign the previous season but his experience was vital for this championship challenge in the First Division. After the celebrations of that Saturday night, however, Leishman made a difficult choice. “Bobby was a great guy, great company, but he was 37 or 38 and I had to tell him I wasn’t keeping him. They hate you for that when it happens, but we kept in touch afterwards.” Smith played on with Partick Thistle and Berwick Rangers before retiring. He lives in Tranent, East Lothian, and regularly attends the matches of Hibs, another of his former clubs. He is a taxi driver
7 David Irons Signed from Clydebank for £25,000 in 1986, Irons was a box-to-box midfielder who had an astonishing career that ended with a Third Division winner’s medal for Gretna at the end of last season, when he was 43. This was the only other championship win in a career that also saw him play for Partick Thistle and St Johnstone before joining Annan Athletic as player-manager. From there he joined Gretna, where he is currently assistant manager to Rowan Alexander with the runaway Second Division leaders