The last season of the decade of the 1890s – 1899/1900 – was a mixture of the disappointing and the successful.
The league campaign had gone badly, Celtic winning only 9 of 18 matches to finish second. By contrast, the winners, Rangers, won 15 of theirs. Celtic also lost out to the Light Blues in the final of both the Glasgow Cup (0-1 at Cathkin) and the Charity Cup (1-5 at Hampden). However, in the Scottish Cup, the side showed how well it could play, powering its way in goal-scoring form through the early rounds;-
13/1/1900 Bo’ness (H) 7-1 1,000
27/1/1900 Port Glasgow (A) 5-1 4,000
QF 17/2/1900 Kilmarnock (H) 4-0 8,000
SF 24/2/1900 Rangers (A) 2-2 30,000
Replay 10/3/1900 Rangers (H) 4-0 32,000
In the final, played on this day in 1900, a disappointing crowd of 15,000 turned up at Ibrox, when the Spiders of Queen’s Park were the opponents.
Celtic won the toss and chose to play with the wind at their backs in the first half but it was Queen’s Park who took the lead early in the match.
That merely pushed Celtic to raise their game and they did so, getting three goals from inside-left Sandy MacMahon, centre-forward John Divers and outside-left John Bell just before half-time.
Early in the second half, Divers scored again to make it 4-1 and although Queen’s Park pulled two goals back, the final score of 4-3 gave Celtic their third Scottish Cup success.