The real crisis in Scottish football
As the SPL enters its final weekend, Andrew McFadyen looks back on a tumultuous season and reflects on Scottish football’s past glories.
Celtic’s Neil Lennon says winning the title will only sink in when he lifts the trophy after Sunday’s game against Hearts. It’s the 43rd time that the Parkhead club has won the Championship.
A glance at the history books shows that the Glasgow duopoly of Rangers and Celtic has not been broken for more than a quarter of a century.
The title last left Scotland’s biggest city in 1985, when Sir Alex Ferguson’s formidable Aberdeen team took it to the North East.
This depressing statistic shows that, despite the sterling work of my colleague Alex Thomson, the real crisis in Scottish football is not at Ibrox. The likes of Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen haven’t been competing for decades.
Once upon a time, they rampaged across Europe.
For those who can remember it, the 1980s were Scottish football’s last true vintage era.
In 1983, Aberdeen enjoyed their most famous victory beating the mighty Real Madrid 2-1 in the final of the European Cup Winners Cup.
Their achievements were almost matched by Jim McLean’s Dundee United, who took his talented side to the semi-final of the European Cup and the final of the UEFA Cup.
The Taysiders are still the only British team ever to beat Barcelona home and away in a European tie. With all their money, even Chelsea couldn’t do this.
In the days before Sky television and Russian billionaires pushed players’ wages into the stratosphere, Scottish teams regularly competed at the business end of European football.
One of this season’s most uplifting moments for neutrals was Kilmarnock’s victory over Celtic in the League Cup Final. The Ayrshire club had its own golden generation in the 1960s.
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Killie finished as runners-up in the league for four successive years from 1960 to 1964. They also delivered one of the most astounding comebacks in the history of the Scottish game.
Their first European adventure was in September 1964 against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Inter-City Fairs Cup, the precursor to today’s UEFA Cup. The Germans arrived in Ayrshire with a 3-0 lead from the first leg.
With just over a minute played, Frankfurt scored again to put themselves 1-0 up on the night and 4-0 on aggregate.
What followed was so remarkable that it will be remembered as long as football is played in Ayrshire. With a crowd of just over 15,000 roaring them on, Killie fought back to win 5-1.
When striker Ronnie Hamilton grabbed the winner with just two minutes to go the commentator observed in clipped BBC tones that all: “all the boys in Ayrshire are swarming onto Rugby Park”.
Grainy black and white footage on YouTube shows hundreds of fans surrounding the players.
Team captain Frank Beattie was a part-timer who worked a full shift as a coal miner at a pit in Stirlingshire before travelling in to train by public transport
That season, Kilmarnock went on to win their first and only Championship, clinching the title on the final day of the season at Tynecastle with a 2-0 victory over Hearts.
Kilmarnock’s MP Cathy Jamieson recalls, “we were quite young at the time, so we were normally bundled off to bed early even on a Saturday night. But on that occasion, we got taken up to Kilmarnock Cross to see the players return, and stay up to join the celebrations! My mum used to make us blue and white woollen Killie dolls, so those were on display!”
It shows how much the game has changed that, the team captain, Frank Beattie, was a part-timer who worked a full shift as a coal miner at a pit in Stirlingshire before travelling in to train by public transport.
None of today’s pampered stars could look him in the eye.
Most football supporters know about Celtic’s famous win over Inter Milan in 1967, becoming the first British club to lift the European Cup (former Celtic captain Billy McNeill is pictured above holding a photo of him with the Cup).
That same season Rangers also reached the final of the European Cup Winners Cup and Kilmarnock played against Don Revie’s Leeds United in the semi-final of the Fairs Cup.
These days might never come back, but the long-term health of Scotland’s domestic game requires genuine competition.
The SPL won’t recover its sporting integrity until the fans of more than two clubs can begin the season dreaming that they will be crowned as Champions on the final day.
Follow Andrew McFadyen on Twitter @apmcfadyen