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Shock for Asterisk Johnston, It’s not 54, but 53 and a half – Historian David Potter explains

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“Titles with asterisks beside them? The 95/96 title deserves at the very least, a question mark,” Timothy Leary noted on Twitter, referencing a recent article on The Celtic Star.

Asterisk Johnston, as we will now call him, started this all off with an interview with Graham Spiers in The Times this morning where he states that Celtic winning the league would only mean it’s 8 and a half in a row, rather than nine as the league campaign hasn’t been finished.

That half a flag that he’s prepared to concede implies 50% of the season has been played, while Celtic have actually played 79% of our games. If you want to round up or down the fraction to the nearest full number or half, we’re closer to 100% than 50%, Asterisk, so we’ll take that as the full nine will have been achieved, should the season be ended early.

Of course Timothy is correct, looking back at that 1995/96 season – the Scottish FA’s CEO lost his job as a direct result of that particular anti-Celtic scandal that cost Celtic a title. The bigger picture though is the 54 titles that the Rangers claimed their founding father Charles Green bought when he picked up assets from the old club after their proposed CVA was rejected in June 2012 and the club as a direct consequence went into liquidation, owing tens of millions of pounds to creditors.

Here is Charles Green telling us that he bought the titles for the Rangers. They weren’t won they were bought.

So while we all accept that this is complete nonsense, the Rangers fans all pretend that they are somehow the same club as the one that died, and therefore all 54 titles that they apparently won were still theirs to boast about. “Going for 55” has been one of their battlecries since they finally made it into the top league in Scottish Football in 2016.

So if they are “Going or 55” and we set aside the fact that they are an entirely different football club to the one founded in 1872, then this implies that Asterisk Johnston’s favourites have won 54 titles, or at least the First Rangers have.

But today he rather helpfully reminded us that half titles can actually be a thing, as he argued that Celtic having played 79% of the games this season are only entitled to half a title.

So if that logic applies to Celtic surely it also applied to Asterisk Johnston’s collection of Ibrox clubs?

Asterisk Johnston’s mob claim 54 title wins – but is that correct? There are a couple that we’d like to examine – for instance the time that they ‘shared’ the title with Dumbarton. Imagine buying a Twix, opening it and giving one of the chocolate sticks to your other half and keeping one for yourself.

Did Rangers and Dumbarton get one chocolate biscuit each as they shared the Scottish title? Surely that’s a half a Twix and half a title, bang on 50% too, Asterisk Johnston.

We asked Celtic Historian David Potter to examine this title sharing situation and also another disputed title conclusion in the history of Rangers (1872-1912). Here are his findings, and again we remind you that he’s talking about the titles won by Rangers 1972-2012, not the club that Charles Green founded later on in 2012…

‘Not 54, but 53 and a half’ – David Potter

No-one would like to accuse Rangers of telling lies (oh, good gracious. no!) but they are, I feel, guilty of an “inexactitude”  when they claim to have won the Scottish League 54 times. 53 and a half is a slightly more accurate account of things, for their first ever League Championship (the first ever for anyone) was shared with Dumbarton – and Celtic played a part in it. This is season 1890/91, the first year of this novel way of playing football whereby everyone played each other home and away for points! It had been a success in England since season 1888/89, and was considered to be worth a go in Scotland.

Celtic finished third, largely through a certain naivety rare among these normally hard-headed committee men of Celtic in the early years. Not understanding the rules of this new competition, they fielded an ineligible player, the goalkeeper called James Bell in a game against Hearts at Tynecastle and were deducted four points. They also lost to Cambuslang and St Mirren, had a few draws, and were not really in close contention in the 10 team League.

“If David Potter finds out we’ll be down to 53 and a half”

On 25 April, Rangers beat Dumbarton 4-2 at Ibrox, a result that seemed to swing the title in their favour, for although both Rangers and the “Sons of the Rock” were now tied on 27 points, Rangers had two games to play, and Dumbarton only one. But their next game on the rainy day of 2 May with a muddy pitch was at Ibrox against Celtic. Rangers had never yet defeated Celtic in an official competition, and failed to break their duck here again, for Peter Dowds scored with a rebound after Willie Maley hit the bar, and after Rangers equalised, Johnny Madden scored a winner in the second half.

Sandy McMahon and Johnnie Campbell starred for the green and white vertical stripes in this game, and as Dumbarton beat St Mirren today, it meant that Rangers would have to beat Third Lanark in their final game on 9 May. They duly did so, and thus both teams had 29 points, Dumbarton with 61 goals for and 21 against, as distinct from Rangers with 58 and 25.

Had goal difference or goal average been in vogue, Dumbarton would have won the League.

The trouble was that this was the first year of the tournament – they were still making it up as they went along – and no-one ever thought about goal difference or goal average. After a bit of dither, the Scottish League decided that a play-off was a good idea, and a game was fixed for the neutral venue of Cathkin Park on Thursday 21 May. It was a fine night, and 6,000 appeared (some of them in shirt sleeves, to the horror of late Victorian society) to see a 2-2 draw in which Rangers were 2-0 up at half time, but the Sons fought back to make it 2-2. It was the result that no-one wanted… but no extra time was played, and everyone seems to have agreed there and then amicably that the League Championship was to be shared. No strong movement was made to play another game, and the matter is never mentioned again.

Cathkin Park

Nevertheless, 53 and a half seems more accurate than 54! And talking about 53, there was 1953 when Hibs scored a record 93 goals but still lost out to Rangers on goal average. This however, although lucky for Rangers, was within the agreed constitution and we cannot complain, even though it was late at Palmerston Park in their last game before they managed to scrape their equaliser which brought them level with Hibs!

David Potter

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About Author

David was a distinguished Celtic author and historian and writer for The Celtic Star. He lived in Kirkcaldy and followed Celtic all my life, having seen them first at Dundee in March 1958. He was a retired teacher and his other interests were cricket, drama and the poetry of Robert Burns. David Potter passed away on 29 July 2023 after a short illness. He was posthumously awarded a Special Recognition award by Celtic FC at the club's Player of the Year awards in May 2024. David's widow Rosemary accepted the award to huge applause from the Celtic Supporters in the Hydro.

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