Celtic v Rangers by David Potter

Author:David Potter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY SIX

NO MORE MR NICE GUY

Celtic 2 Rangers 1

Scottish League Cup Final

Hampden Park

23 October 1965

Celtic: Simpson, Young and Gemmell; Murdoch, McNeill and Clark; Johnstone, Gallagher, McBride, Lennox and Hughes

Rangers: Ritchie, Johansen and Provan; Wood, McKinnon and Greig; Henderson, Willoughby, Forrest, Wilson and Johnston

Referee: Mr H. Phillips, Wishaw

THIS was possibly the most significant Celtic v Rangers game of them all. This was the game that swung the balance of power, more or less irreversibly, from Rangers to Celtic for the next ten years and more, and this was the game that guaranteed Celtic a permanent place at the top of Scottish football, when for a few years in the early 1960s they had slipped dangerously close to insignificance.

The reasons for all this were complex. The game must be seen in the context of the last few years of the early 60s when Celtic teams came out to play Rangers with an almost visible and tangible look about them that they were expecting to lose. No matter how well they had played up till then, there was almost an immutable law of heaven that Celtic had to lose to Rangers. Since the glorious 7-1 game of 1957, children had grown up knowing nothing else and were almost schooled and programmed into accepting it.

The difference now was Jock Stein. The Scottish Cup had been annexed in April 1965, but, other than in a Glasgow Cup tie at the end of the 1964/65 season, Stein’s Celtic had still not yet beaten Rangers. When the clubs met at Ibrox a month previously Celtic had lost 1-2 – a narrow defeat, at least partly to be explained by an injury to Billy McNeill, but a defeat nevertheless, and in the context of the Old Firm that meant everything. It followed then that a defeat here today might mean that paradise had not in fact arrived in April, and that the long dismal tunnel of defeats to Rangers was to continue.

Celtic had only reached the final on the Monday before when they beat Hibs 4-0 in a semi-final replay. It had been a commanding performance – but could this be carried on until the Saturday when it really counted? Assistant manager Sean Fallon wrote a piece in Wednesday’s Scottish Daily Express (an influential and normally very pro-Rangers newspaper in 1965) to the effect that Celtic were going to win on Saturday. Very matter of fact, and for this he was much ridiculed by Rangers fans, but it did give the impression to Celtic fans that the club believed it was possible, and that the glorious celebrations of last April could be replicated, and this time with a victory in a cup final against Rangers.

The precedents were hardly encouraging. Last year at this time, the Scottish League Cup Final had seen Celtic well on top, but the ‘death wish’ took over in the missing of vital chances and the lapses of concentration in defence, and there were the vivid memories, still fresh in the mind, of the Scottish

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