The Celtic Rising: The League Cup final on this day in 1965

The Celtic Rising: The League Cup final on this day in 1965…

Part 1: This was possibly the most significant Celtic v Rangers game of them all…

The days between the Hibs game and the final saw the propaganda battle in full spate. Celtic had no injury worries and mentioned this every time a journalist looked in their direction, whereas Rangers were compelled to admit that George McLean would be unfit and unable to play.

Sean Fallon wrote a series of articles in the normally Rangers-orientated Scottish Daily Express in which he predicted a Celtic victory, and he wrote it in such a way that he was almost assuming that Celtic would win anyway. Much was made about how nice it would be if Ronnie Simpson, who had assumed that his career was over several years ago, could win a Scottish League Cup medal to add to the two FA Cup medals he had won with Newcastle United in 1952 and 1955.

By Friday night, Gair Henderson in The Evening Times was predicting a Celtic victory as long as they managed to keep the “touchline terrors” of Henderson and Johnston quiet.

There was little wonder that a huge crowd turned up. Last year had seen a 2-1 win for Rangers in the same League Cup final, but now the tables had turned and Celtic, full of confidence, were managed by Jock Stein, from whom positivity radiated. The main question seemed to be “Could Celtic win another trophy in 1965 to maintain their improvement or could Rangers fight back and prove that Celtic’s April triumph was simply a one-off?” The stakes could hardly be higher.

This was possibly the most significant Celtic v Rangers game of them all. This was the game which swung the balance of power, more or less irreversibly, from Rangers to Celtic for the next 10 years and more, and this was the game which guaranteed Celtic a permanent place at the top of Scottish football, when for a few years in the early 1960s, they had slipped dangerously close to insignificance.

The reasons for all this were complex, and yet they were simple too. The game must be seen in the context of the last few years of the early 60’s, when Celtic teams came out to play Rangers with an almost visible and tangible look about them, as if they knew that they were expecting to lose.

No matter how well they had played up till then, there was almost an immutable law of Heaven that Celtic had to lose to Rangers. Since the glorious 7-1 game of 1957, children had grown up knowing little else and were almost schooled and programmed into accepting it. Season 1963/64 in particular had seen a fine Celtic team, but one who had lost five times to Rangers with an eerie pattern in every case of holding them well for the first half-hour, missing a few chances, then encountering some bad luck in the shape of a refereeing decision or a defensive error…then a complete, dismal, collapse in the second half…and loads of complaints and moaning, but nothing tangible.

The difference was now Jock Stein. The Scottish Cup had been annexed in April 1965, but, other than in a Glasgow Cup tie at the end of the 1964/65 season, Stein’s Celtic had still not yet beaten Rangers. When the clubs met at Ibrox a month previously, Celtic had lost 1-2 – a narrow defeat, at least partly to be explained by an injury to Billy McNeill, but a defeat nevertheless, and in the context of the Old Firm, that meant everything.

It followed then that a defeat here today might mean that Paradise had NOT in fact arrived in April, and that the long dismal tunnel of defeats to Rangers was to continue.

To be continued, in two further parts this evening on The Celtic Star….

David Potter