1

Date: Wednesday, April 27, 1966.

Venue: Hampden Park.

Attendance: 96,862.

Competition: Scottish Cup (final replay).

Result: Rangers 1, Celtic 0.

Scorers: Kai Johansen (Rangers).

Referee: T Wharton (Clarkston).

AROUND this time, Celtic looked unbeatable. Jock Stein had taken over as manager in 1965 and had upstaged Rangers in all kinds of ways on and off the field. He was reigning supreme. Rangers went into this Scottish Cup replay after a 0-0 draw four days earlier with just a faint chance of winning it.

Kai Johansen scored a glorious goal with an angled shot after coming in from the right wing. It sailed beyond Ronnie Simpson and into the net. That single goal won the cup in front of a massive crowd of nearly 100,000 under the floodlights at Hampden.

You always got huge crowds at big games in those days and the crowds made the atmosphere. The floodlights at Hampden at that time were terrible. They were very basic. So we saw that stunning goal in the gloom, almost by candlelight.

2

Date: Saturday, May 6, 1967.

Competition: First Division.

Venue: Ibrox Stadium.

Attendance: 78,000.

Result: Rangers 2, Celtic 2.

Scorers: Jardine, Hynd (Rangers), Johnstone 2 (Celtic).

Referee: W M Syme (Glasgow).

I entered Ibrox with Helenio Herrera, the Inter Milan manager, before this game. I had parked miles away from the stadium and as I walked up the road to the stadium there was Herrera getting out of his car. He was there to spy on Celtic before the European Cup final in Lisbon. He was soon surrounded by Celtic supporters. He was harangued by them as he made his way into the ground, but he smiled through it all.

I was in my early days of working for the BBC and did the radio commentary that day from the high press area they had in those days. The game itself was played on a terrible day and on a very muddy pitch. But Jimmy Johnstone scored what was, in my view, the best goal he ever scored. He cut in from the right wing and hit the ball with his left foot and it ended up in the top corner of the net. It was a superb goal. It put Celtic 2-1 in front.

Rangers equalised through Roger Hynd late on and the game finished 2-2. But Rangers needed to win if they were going to win the league. The draw suited Celtic. The retained the Scottish title in the penultimate game before going to Portugal.

3

Date: Saturday, April 26, 1969.

Venue: Hampden Park.

Attendance: 132,870.

Competition: Scottish Cup (final).

Result: Celtic 4, Rangers 0.

Scorers: McNeill, Lennox, Connelly, Chalmers (Celtic).

Referee: J Callaghan (Glasgow).

THIS game was very significant for the then Rangers striker, Alex Ferguson. Celtic scored after just two minutes. Billy McNeill netted a header at a corner. That moment brought down Fergie at Ibrox. He was blamed, particularly by Willie Allison, the Rangers press officer, for the defeat because he hadn’t marked Billy properly.

Celtic went on to win the game comfortably and Ferguson was finished at Rangers. He never played for them again because of that. It was terribly unjust. He was pilloried for one mistake. They were just annoyed at having lost the final so comprehensively to their Old Firm rivals. He carried the can.

The next time I saw Alex after that was in Malpensa Airport in Milan before Celtic played Feyenoord in the European Cup final in 1970. There he was in amongst all of these Celtic supporters despite having cost Rangers the Scottish Cup final the year before.

That, for me, was an indication of just how ambitious Fergie was to succeed as a manager in those days. He was prepared, as a Blue Nose, to sit in amongst Celtic supporters so he could study what Celtic did in that game. He didn’t get any hassle at all. There was some good-natured joshing, that was all.

He was a player with Falkirk by then, but he had gone to the trouble of flying out to see that game. It was a clear sign of his thirst to get on in the game as a manager.

4

Date: Saturday, May 5, 1973.

Venue: Hampden Park.

Attendance: 122,714.

Competition: Scottish Cup (final).

Result: Celtic 2, Rangers 3.

Scorers: Dalglish, Connelly (Celtic), Parlane, Conn, Forsyth (Rangers).

Referee: J R P Gordon (Newport-on-Tay).

This was the centenary cup final – and it was settled by one of the strangest goals I have ever seen. It was scored by Tam Forsyth and ensured that Rangers won 3-2. His winner was extraordinary. The ball was played into the box, Derek Johnstone headed it onto one post, it rolled across the goal line and hit the other post.

Tam Forsyth came in to try and put the ball in the back of the net. He virtually missed the ball, stood on it, fell back and shoved it over the line. It came off the base of his foot. That meant that Rangers won the centenary cup final.

Jock Wallace was the manager of Rangers by that time. I was interviewing him on the Hampden turf after the game when Willie Waddell, his predecessor who by that time had become general manager, came striding out of the tunnel and started to scream at Wallace to end the interview. Princess Alexandra had come up to Scotland to hand over the trophy to the winning captain and he was going to be presented to her.

That was an indication of the conflict that existed between Wallace and Waddell that became far worse in time. Jock couldn’t get out of Ibrox quickly enough to get away from Willie and eventually left to join Leicester City. Sometimes when you went into the stadium you could hear them shouting at each other.

5

Date: Monday, May 21, 1979.

Venue: Celtic Park.

Attendance: 52,000.

Competition: Scottish Premier League.

Result: Celtic 4, Rangers 2.

Scorers: Aitken, McCluskey, Jackson o.g., MacLeod (Celtic), Russell, MacDonald (Rangers).

Referee: E Pringle (Edinburgh).

This game was played just days before Scotland played England at Wembley. Rangers just needed a draw to win the league because they had easy games against Partick Thistle and Hibernian to follow. A win for Celtic, though, was vital.

The key moment in the game took place just 10 minutes in the second half when Johnny Doyle was ordered off for kicking Alex MacDonald. He said that he was provoked. But he did it blatantly and could no complain when he was red carded. Celtic were trailing 1-0 at the time and looked out of it completely.

But the 10 men had tremendous fighting spirit. They fought back with goals from Roy Aitken, George McCluskey and a Colin Jackson own goal. Murdo MacLeod then scored probably his most famous goal just before the final whistle from 20 to 25 yards out. The victory gave Celtic the league against all the odds. Nobody expected them to win because Rangers were going for a treble.

Just days later the Scotland supporters tore London apart in what was one of the worst Wembley matches for crowd trouble that I can recollect.

6

Date: Saturday, March 22, 1986.

Venue: Ibrox Stadium.

Attendance: 41,006.

Competition: Scottish Premier League.

Result: Rangers 4, Celtic 4.

Scorers: Fraser 2, McCoist, Fleck (Rangers), Johnston, McClair, Burns, MacLeod (Celtic)

Referee: D Syme (Rutherglen).

There were two things which were significant on this particular day. The first was that Willie McStay was sent off and Celtic were playing with 10 men. But that wasn’t as important as the aftermath. What happened following the game resulted in the end of the old regime at Rangers and the dawn of a new era at Ibrox.

David Holmes, who had been brought onto the board by the then owner Lawrence Marlborough, went into the board room after the game with Jock Wallace, the manager. Everyone was cock-a-hoop because they had fought back to draw the game 4-4. But they were playing against 10 men on their own pitch.

Holmes thought it was ludicrous that Rangers should view that as some kind of triumph. He phoned Marlborough, who lived in Lake Tahoe, and told him: “I’m out of here. I want nothing more to do with this.” Marlborough said to him: ‘But I need you. Holmes replied: ‘Well, if you want me to stay I’ll need to run the place.” Marlborough said: ‘Okay then, take charge”

The aftermath of that game led to the appointment of Graeme Souness as Rangers manager. Holmes changed Rangers, and Scottish football, completely. Holmes was a joiner to trade. The joke at the time was that he was “the joiner from Falkirk who thinks he’s the carpenter from Nazareth”. I always got on very well with him. He certainly turned the club around and made the dominant force in the country once again.