Posted on Saturday, 28th January 2012 by Paul
A competition that we have a history of incredible highs and some awful lows in.
The first of our 14 wins in the competition came in 1956 against Partick after a replay but then no one wants to talk about that do they considering what happened a year later. “The 7-1 game” as it will be forever known was when Celtic destroyed Rangers with a scoreline that to this day remains a record in a British cup final. Billy McPhail scored a hat-trick that day but the star man was Willie Fernie who simply tore Rangers to shreds. It is often said that the breakthrough for what was to become The Lisbon Lions was aganst Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup final of 1965. Jock Stein always disagreed with that and would always say the League Cup win against Rangers, with Yogi Hughes grabbing both goals, the following season was the platform from which Lions sprung from.
That game would spark an incredible sequence that would see Celtic win five League Cups in a row and go on to compete in 14 League Cup finals in a row. There was a bizarre four year run of defeats in the early 70s with shock defeats to Partick Thistle, Hibs, Dundee and even Rangers. The sequence of cup final appearances was ended in 1978 by some incredible refereeing which saw Celtic players stop for a clear penalty/injured player whilst the Ref waved play on allowing Rangers to run up the park and score sparking a near riot. Joe Craig was the Celtic player and JPR Gordon(Newport on Tay) was the Ref. The same Ref who once gave John Greig a free kick after he had broken Bobby Lennox’s leg. Of course our older readers will know that Gordon was later found to have taken bribes from Juventus in the form of a three piece suit. Bast*rd.
The next time we appeared in a League Cup final was in 1982 with Charlie and Murdo hitting two pearlers in lashing rain to give us a 2-1 win over Rangers. My friend Brad, in a decision he still regrets, got married that day and swears that when asked by the Priest if he was nervous, replied, “Aye, I think they could equalise”
And that was that for fifteen long years as we had to sit through Rangers win after Rangers win, including three against us, one in 1984 when Bob Valentine just kept awarding them penalties til they won, 1986 when Davie Syme gave them a late ridiculous penalty after Brian McClair had scored one of the best goals Hampden has ever seen and 1990 when Paul Elliot scored a header from a yard off the ground before they overturned it.
Then there was Raith Rovers.
Undoubtedly the worst I’ve ever felt after a football game, after a 2-2 draw we managed to lose a game we had dominated for 120 mins, on a penalty shootout. I know folk often say Black Sunday at Fir Park was the worst but then we won the league the season before and the season after. Raith Rovers was supposed to be the start of the comeback, Fergus had taken over, we were on the up, here we go again and then disaster. No excuses, it was a humiliation.
Some of the demons of that day were exorcised in 1997 when Wim Jansen’s Celtic, on the way to stopping 10 in a row, thrashed a good Dundee Utd side 3-0 at Ibrox in possibly the best I’ve ever seen a Celtic team play in a cup final. We won it again in 2000 under Kenny Dalglish in an awful, but easy, game against Aberdeen. The next win was one of the very best, this time under Martin O’Neill and his first trophy, when we went down to 10 men against Kilmarnock and looked up against it until Henrik stepped up with a stomping hat-trick that sent us all into delirium. Dunfermline were skelped 3-0 in 2006 in what has to be the most comfortable cup final I have ever been at and then came one of the most sweet in 2009 where Ireland beat Rangers 2-0 in extra time with goals from O’Dea and McGeady.
We lost last year to Rangers in a game that never really felt like we had it in our grasp and didn’t do enough to deserve it.
So now to Falkirk on Sunday in the Semi Final. After reading through that lot, if you can predict an outcome, good luck to you!
Paul (twitter @paullarkin74 and for podcast and website updates @TheLostBhoys & @HomeBhoys)
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January 28th, 2012 at 9:02 am
Must admit you dress up this cup well. While it’s had some great moments our record in it is really terrible when you consider we have played in 28 finals and lost 14 of them.
Compare that to the Scottish Cup and 53 final appearances with 35 wins.
[Reply]
Harper Reply:
January 28th, 2012 at 9:30 am
Cheer up Kev Lol
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