Scottish Cup

David Potter

Description

The Scottish Cup: Celtic's Favourite Trophy is the story of Celtic's love affair with football's oldest prize. The club first won the cup in 1892, an achievement that meant so much to the young side and their struggling, oppressed community. In the years that followed this special trophy became entwined with the club's identity through many unforgettable moments. Jimmy Quinn scored the first hat-trick in a Scottish Cup final in 1904, there was Patsy Gallacher's extraordinary goal in 1925, a record attendance when Celtic lifted the cup in 1937, Willie Wallace's brace of goals en route to Lisbon in 1967, two remarkable comebacks in the 1980s, and Odsonne Edouard's heroic turnaround in 2019. The book goes beyond the cup finals, recalling the tough games in the early rounds, including the more spectacular encounters with Rangers and Aberdeen. Romance, drama and passion are all bound up in Celtic's annual quest for the cup, involving great players, from the Sandy McMahon era to the days of Scott Brown.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 12 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317552
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
David Potter, 2020
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Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316890
eBook ISBN 9781785317552
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Contents
Introduction
1 The 19th Century: 1888/89-1898/99
2 The Celts Of Old : 1900-1914
3 Between The Wars: 1920-1939
4 The Lean Years: 1947-1964
5 The Great Days: 1965-1977
6 Fitful, Sporadic But Occasionally Spectacular: 1978-2000
7 The Glorious 21st Century? Well Sometimes!: 2001-2020
INTRODUCTION
THERE IS a special relationship between Celtic and the Scottish Cup. Celtic have won the Scottish Cup 39 times, six more than Rangers who have had several periods of missing out on the trophy, not least the years between 1903 and 1928 when a whole quarter of a century elapsed without Rangers winning the Scottish Cup. They were able to win the Scottish League but not the Scottish Cup. Third, incidentally, comes Queen s Park who, of course, ruled the roost in the 19th century but could not cope with professionalism. Then a fairly long way behind come clubs like Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs - all of whom really should have done an awful lot better.
But the sight of the Scottish Cup draped in green and white ribbons remains for Celtic fans one of the greatest sights of them all; When the Celts go up, to get the Scottish Cup, we ll be there is sung with gusto on appropriate occasions, and on at least three occasions in history - 1951, 1965 and 1995 - a trophy famine was symbolically ended by Celtic lifting the Scottish Cup!
The Scottish Cup is the second-oldest football competition in the world, second only to the English (or FA) Cup, but then again there have been three different English Cup trophies. The original Scottish one is now without doubt the oldest trophy still played for in the football world. It is too frail to be carried about, so it stays at Hampden, is duly presented to the winning captain (almost exclusively Scott Brown in recent years!) on cup final day, then exchanged for a replica while the original is put back into its case.
Since 1873 it has engendered an incredible amount of annual interest, excitement, enthusiasm, ecstasy and heartbreak with huge crowds. It has also created an awful lot of money. In 1955, 1957 and from 1977 onwards, the Scottish Cup Final has been televised live and to many countries. It is virtually impossible to quantify how many people actually watch the Scottish Cup Final - but it is a lot - and it is not uncommon to hear claims from some US, Australian and Canadian television companies that the Scottish Cup Final, especially when Celtic are involved, attracts more television spectators than the English Cup Final.
Another team that attracts a lot of attention in the new world are not Rangers, funnily enough (although they too have a sizeable following), but Aberdeen. Like Celtic, the ancestors of Aberdeen supporters had a fairly large diaspora in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, a Celtic v Aberdeen pairing on Scottish Cup Final day creates a tremendous amount of interest in the lands beyond the wave.
The Scottish Cup, being some 17 years older than the Scottish League, was, until the arrival of the European Cup in the mid-1950s, considered to be the more important of the two trophies. (The Scottish League Cup, which really only started after the Second World War, is a lot younger and still to this day suffers a little sneering, especially from the supporters of teams who have suffered early exits!) The Scottish Cup was called the Blue Riband (a Victorian term for the best honour of them all) and the final at Hampden, usually on a sunny day in April until the 1960s, then May from the mid-1970s onwards, was (and rightly) looked upon as one of the highlights of the season. In the 1950s, when people were less partisan in their allegiances, fans would make a point of going to the Scottish Cup Final, no matter who was playing, and Hampden was, of course, always big enough to accommodate everyone.
And there is so much more to it than simply the final. The early rounds are before the new year, the first round containing the top league teams is usually in January and then each subsequent month has a round. There are, of course, no second chances in the Scottish Cup as there are in the Scottish League, and therein lies the attraction. It is always possible for big teams to go out on the day to smaller teams. Celtic have suffered at the hands of Inverness, Clyde, Arthurlie and a few others. Thankfully, the Scottish Cup has not been devalued as the English Cup has been in recent years.
It has been argued that it was the winning of the Scottish Cup by Hibernian in 1887 which played a large part in the history of Celtic. Hibs, the self-proclaimed Irish team of Edinburgh, beat Dumbarton in February 1887 to become the first eastern team to lift the trophy. Eastern was a big enough shock, but Irish had the longer-lasting indirect effect. It was possibly a blow and a wake-up call to Queen s Park and the middle-class establishment, but the fact that the Edinburgh Irishmen could win the Scottish Cup may well have - in fact almost certainly - planted a few seeds in the minds of some Glasgow Irishmen that they could found a team which could do the same thing. By the end of 1887, a decision had been taken that a football team would be established to provide food for poor children.
Two years later in 1889, the Glasgow Irishmen s team had reached the final and in 1892, they won the trophy. If we can imagine (or in some cases, if we are old enough, recollect) 26 and 27 May 1967 when Celtic came back with the big, beautifully ugly, European Cup from Lisbon and the prolonged celebrations in Celtic enclaves all over Scotland, then we can get some idea of what 1892 did to the East End when Celtic won the Scottish Cup. The Irish, despised, ridiculed and blatantly discriminated against by some, could now do something. They could play football! There was now no need for violence to make any political point. They had done it on the football field, and the Scottish Cup was there to prove it!
Celtic won the trophy again in seven years time, and from that day to this (if we ignore war years and the acknowledged lean years between 1954 and 1965) seven years have not passed without Celtic winning the Scottish Cup. Even in the awful years between 1954 and 1965, Celtic reached four Scottish Cup Finals and the lamentations of the Celtic support plummeted to biblical depths - but it still did a lot to illustrate the affinity that Celtic supporters had with the Scottish Cup.
So many Celtic players have been defined by the Scottish Cup. One thinks of Sandy McMahon with a glorious header in 1892, Jimmy Quinn s hat-trick in 1904, Patsy Gallacher in 1925, Billy McNeill in 1965, Dixie Deans (also with a hat-trick in 1972), Frank McAvennie in 1988, Henrik Larsson in 2001 and 2004 and Odsonne Edouard in 2019.
It is also true that Celtic can be defined in a negative sense as well by the Scottish Cup. The lean years between 1954 and 1965, as we have said, saw four dreadful Scottish Cup Finals. Three went to replays, and in every single one of them, dreadful team selection played a part, the one in 1956 in particular defying belief.
Spite against one particular player and a misguided attempt to be seen to gain the moral high ground played a part in 1955, 1961 was just plain silly and the 1963 replay must be one of the earliest surrenders on record. In each of the four cases, the benefitting club simply could not believe their luck, and the defeat and the manner of the defeat left a virtually indelible pain in the hearts of the Celtic supporters.
It was once said by Billy McNeill that if Celtic and Rangers had been in the English Civil War, Celtic would have been the Cavaliers. Rangers would have perhaps been the more technically correct, orthodox, solid Roundheads but Celtic would have been the romantic, quixotic, spectacular Cavaliers. It is a reasonable analogy and possibly explains why Rangers have won the league more often, whereas Celtic have had more panache and flamboyance to win the Scottish Cup.
The Scottish Cup is - and should be - Celtic s favourite trophy. Celtic have competed in it 119 times and won it 39 times, and that is a success rate of something like once every three years. That is not bad.
CHAPTER ONE
THE 19TH CENTURY
1888/89-1898/99
THE SCOTTISH Cup had been in existence since the 1873/74 season. In the early years it had been more or less the exclusive property of Queen s Park, but Vale of Leven, Renton and Dumbarton had had their moments of glory as well, and, of course, when Hibs won the Scottish Cup in 1887, it galvanised the Glasgow Irishmen into starting a football club on the grounds that whatever the Edinburgh Irishmen could do, the Glasgow Irishmen could also do.
Celtic s first Scottish Cup tie was played at Old Celtic Park against near neighbours Shettleston on 1 September 1888. It was only natural that the first Scottish Cup tie of this new, and already well-supported, team should attract a great deal of attention, and