Humiliate your rivals in the Cup Final by putting five goals past them and, if you don’t pay the piper, you pay the consequences. Winning trophies while running up debts you cannot afford to pay is not a viable strategy. The consequences, if you are fortunate enough to survive, has to be painful, otherwise football removes the moral hazard of failure, making Hearts recent experience more likely to happen to other clubs.
Hearts season at the bottom of the Scottish Premiership is the cost of pouring millions of pounds creditors will not receive onto the Hampden Park pitch to hit five goals past a Hibs team, who live within their means. Many other teams were denied progress in the cups, or higher prize money in the league, while the fantasists were building to their 5-1 glory.
Billy Brown’s nonsense about rescinding a punishment for a club who are still in administration is yet another fantasy, but it was fostered in 2012, by the notion that Scottish football can change insolvency rules on the hoof to accommodate a failed club. If you want to change insolvency rules, knock yourself out, but there is near-uniform agreement that you cannot change rules when a favoured club falls foul, in order to benefit them.
This notion that because the rules were not changed to help Newco Rangers into top flight football, Scotland’s reigning Third Division champions would be outraged, is hardly news. The 11 top flight clubs, most of whom appear to be enjoying a competitive ‘Best of the Rest’ league race, and a whole clutch of lower league clubs, would also be outraged if Hearts were advantaged.
In October 2011, when Rangers fate was privately acknowledged, Craig Whyte, Neil Doncaster and SPL chairman, Ralph Topping, discussed this rule change ruse. It should have been a 30 second conversation; declined when first proposed. Instead, Scottish football was put through the real trauma of a fantasy fear of Armageddon. Now everyone who can’t pay their bills think they have the same entitlement to campaign for a rule change – and why shouldn’t they, the tabloids told everyone that changing the rules on the hoof was acceptable.
Hearts fans know this. They are heading for relegation, those I have spoken to have accepted the situation. For them, it’s all about ensuring the club survives and sorting things out for the long term, SPFL results don’t even register. I don’t know any who want to see their club go cap in hand for rule changes, the way Whyte, then Green, did. It’s demeaning and lacks dignity.
This is turning into my favourite domestic season yet. All the ‘They’ve suffered enough’ merchants better get their strategies sorted for the next episode.
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“boycott” I say
Evening Timland from a freezing hun free mountain valley.
So we are about to sign Stefan Johansen, he will do well for us, hopefully he is fit enough to go straight into the team, Joe must be for the ofskie I would imagine.
Younger, prob less than half the wage, getting great press in his homeland, good biz Pedro……..Arghhhhhh, that was hard to type >}
SSN don’t have a clue, he is a midfielder.
RIP Bobby Collins
HH
Big Nan…
Every day is a school day when I read anything from you.
Kitchenbrand was a jungle jim.
Was he really?
I seriously didn’t know that.
Did he hide it from them when he signed?
Think he was South African?
BeforeIwasbornCSC
Winning Captains;
Wee anecdote from the 4-2 game.
I was chatting to Colin Jackson a couple of years ago. He said at the end of the game he shook Murdo’s hand and said that he would now be on his Christmas card list – for obvious reasons!
Teams
Airdrie:
Walker; T Brown, Shanks; McLure, Rodger, Gordon; Cairns, Quinn, baird, Cross, McCulloch.
Scorers:
Celtic:
Bonnar; Boden, Meechan; Evans, McIlroy, Peacock; Higgins, Fernie, Fallon, Collins, Mochan.
Scorers: Mochan 3 (7, 27, ?), Fallon (45), Higgins (50), Fernie (? pen)
Referee:
Attendance: 13,000
St Patrick’s Day 1954 on a sunny afternoon at Broomfield. My second game. I can remember very little about the actual game apart from the crush at Broomfield, singing of Hail Glorious St Patrick and the score.
I do have vivid memories of before and after the game.
RIP Bobby. A truly GREAT footballer.
ryecatcher
We are all well, as I hope your brood are so. Soooo looking forward to spring as it is the best time on the farm.
cliftonville celt
Never seen that on twitter. Ghod rest the poor mans soul and a speedy recovery for those who were injured. Sad indeed.
Weefra HH supporting Wee Oscar.
ryecatcher
Don Kitchenbrand was indeed from Jo’burg.
He scored a load of goals for Rangers in his first season. I think he was on a goal a game.
Then he disappeared from the side. Rumors were he was a closet Catholic and Rangers were unaware when he was signed. The pigeon carrying the mail was downed somewhere over sub Saharan Africa.
GG
Think I was at that game I was abt xv old. Remember getting a close up of Sean Fallon pity the Airdrie player didnt. What a tackler he was. Wiznae a foul btw!!
Premier sports showing the game again , almost half time .
We are playing as well second time around.
Billybhoy….
Remember being at the 4-2 game (what Tim wouldn’t?) in the Jungle.
We were all too young to get into the luxurious bars in Parkhead back then so the pre match swally tended to be Scotsmac followed by posher stuff like vodka / diluting Orange or Creamola Foam.The setting for pre match entertainment back then tended to have memorial stones as a backdrop,and if any daft Huns were stupid enough to take a short cut past our outdoor bar/ lounge / diner,then sometimes a scuffle would ensue in this graveyard.I can remember one such pre match Tim on Bear action on that very evening.After some responsible adults had stopped us all throwing teenage punches at each other,we even made up and shared our pre match cargoes with each other.
Can’t imagine that happening with the youth of today………as I think they’ve stopped making Creamola Foam haha.
BringbacktheFoamystuffCSC
Regarding Kitchenbrand being Catholic I was sure I read that the scouts bringing him over asked him what church he attended he replied Our Lady or St something and scout nearly choked. He was advised to change the name. He duly done so and on arrival in Glasgow was also initiated into the mason’s. Maybe my mind is playing tricks but this seems to be my recollection of Don Kitchenbrand. I think I heard this around the time Le petit merde signed for oldco.
KTF
HH
Bobby Collins RIP. A true Celtic legend.
HH!!
Big Nan
22:25 on
13 January, 2014
Yes I did the write up of that page for the Wiki for obvious reasons and the Rhino as he was known was someone I had seen play for Rangers against Hibs at Easter Road.
My abiding memory was of his powerful physique and charging run which on one attack he could not stop in time and went right over the whitewashed low wall behind the by line!
*a bit like Kevin (Ted) McMinn who chasing the ball ended up running up the tunnel
Charlie Dickson broke a few hearts and was a prolific scorer and like Kitchenbrand was unorthodox to say the least.
Bobby Collins though was all football and will leave only Jimmy Walsh as the survivor of that team I watched back in 1956.
*Jimmy Walsh is a strange one, a prolific goal scorer who left the club along with trainer Alec Dowdals for Leicester.
ryecatcher
22:31 on 13 January, 2014
Big Nan…
Every day is a school day when I read anything from you.
Kitchenbrand was a jungle jim.
Was he really?
I seriously didn’t know that.
Did he hide it from them when he signed?
Think he was South African?
BeforeIwasbornCSC
……………………………
There was no word of him being RC at the time, but he was apparently told to keep it secret. This from a book (OCR unchecked) entitled “Fear and Loathing in World Football”
Until the late 1980s, Rangers appeared to intensify their anti-Catholic employment policy. In 1950, Laurie Blyth was signed on the grounds of his Protestant father, but the scouting system had not uncovered his mother’s Catholicism. Blyth was released at the end of the 1950—1951 season without playing for the first team, the only Scottish Catholic signed by Rangers until 1989.’ In July 1989, Scotland’s best-selling newspaper revealed, under the headline *I was Rangers’ secret Catholic’, that Don Kichenbrand, a 1950s Rangers forward who in his first season scored twenth-three goals in twenty-five games, had harboured ‘a dark secret’. Signed on the basis that as a native South African he would have impeccable Calvinist roots, Kichenbrand also joined die Masons to hide his Catholicism. When rumours about Kichenbrand began to circulate, he was sold in 1958 to Sunderland. In the 1960s and 1970s, marrying even a lapsed Catholic was sufficient still to damage a promising career at Ibrox, as evidenced by Alex Ferguson, Graham Fyfe, Bobby Russell and Gordon Dalziel. Rangers’ policy was also thought to have accounted for their failure to sign the goalkeeper Jim Leighton (who won 91 caps for Scotland, and played outstandingly for Aberdeen), and Kenny Dalglish (a boyhood Rangers fan who signed for Celtic, then Liverpool, and went on to win 100 caps for Scotland). Symbolically, Rangers also appointed Willie Allison as their Public Relations Officer. Allison was described by a prominent sports journalist, Alex Cameron, as ‘about as bigoted as they come: the type who would have been in the Ku Klux Klan had he lived in America. He asked right away about my religion’ (Scotland on Sunday, 30 January 2000). Rangers came to deny the existence of an ‘official policy’ on not signing Catholics, but the period of 1967-74 saw officials trying to defend their position. In 1967, the Vice-Chairman, Matt Taylor, stated that the ban ‘is part of our tradition. To change now would lose us considerable support’ (Jamieson, 1997: 117). Rangers Chairman. John Lawrence, confirmed in 1969, “The policy of not signing Catholics has been with the club since it was formed’; and one board member, George Brown, remarked privately in 1972, ‘We will not sign a Catholic, Rangers are the Protestant team and always will be.’ In BBC interviews in 1985, the Chairman, John Paton, maintained, ‘It’s a case of signing the players good enough . . . Celtic are known as a Catholic club even when they play Protestants, so what’s the difference’ (Only a Game, BBCTV: 1986). Novelist William McIlvanney commented acidly, ‘Perhaps the answer is the subtle difference between black and white’ (ibid.).
############################
And some would like to see them back?
When Kenny left I had flashbacks to when the Wee Barra did. Gutted!!!
Big Nan
Just for you.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtubeRicky+fulton+signing+for+Rangers&docid=4871589378132838&mid=79B1BA93C886861BD32779B1BA93C886861BD327&view=detail&FORM=VIRE7#view=detail&mid=79B1BA93C886861BD32779B1BA93C886861BD327
Neville and Carragher on Sky “confident there will be an EPL player in world team of year next year”. They then list 3 foreign players. (Don’t mention how the Sky money has dicked English players development.)
jude2005 is neil lennon \o
I was a month short of my 7th birthday.
I had attended my first game at CP against East Fife a couple of weeks before.
We won 4-2 and my hero Johnny Higgins scored twice.
My uncles took me to Broomfield walking to the game on a sparkling sunny spring day.
Had I known then what I know now I probably would have been less enthusiastic about my walk home through Clarkston.
Ryecatcher 22.47
Was almost a tear in my eye there thinking it was very similar to Christmas Day in ww1 when the Hun and the tommies (nearly timmies) played fitba before resuming their ritual slaughter…
Kikinthenakas
Ryecatcher,
I sat in a local pub and listened on a wee radio.When Murdo scored the 4th I left to walk home and watch the highlights. I met a neighbour who said the highlights programme was cancelled due to a technicians strike. I thought it was a wind up based on the 7-1 “lenscapgate” till I got into the house!
For the aul yins it must have been deja vu all over again!
Winning Captains
I wasn’t at the 4-2 game – was a student at the time and had some wimpy excuse like a Degree exam the next day!
My experience of trying to find out what was going on at CP throws today’s world of Internet, live everything, dodgy feeds and social media into sharp relief.
The auld hands will remember that there were all sorts of strikes on including the technicians who worked for the TV coverage – hence not even the highlights exist
I can testify that the game wasn’t even on the radio!
As I searched I found Radio Clyde dj (I think it was Paul Cooney) offering updates during his show.
Talk about agony – I heard the early goals, Johnny being sent off and eventually Jackson’s OG
At 3-2 we win the league – I am in a state of nervous exhaustion when the DJ cries – ‘there’s been another goal at Celtic Park’…………….’I’ll tell you who scored it after this next record’
I don’t remember the record but it took for ever, I’m sure I rattled off a few decades and a lot of promises never to do certain things ever again – at 4-2 we are Champions, at 3-3 we are done.
As the record faded there was another agonising delay before – ‘It’s Murdo MacLeod who puts Celtic 4-2 up’
Another agonising wait broken only by prayers, promises and dodgy music before FT is announced and we are Champions.
I lost it – grabbed what drink I had and went visiting – proceeded to break all the promises – don’t remember getting back to my place.
And…….I passed the exam
Ah I remember the record – ‘Oh what a night’
Hail hail
Celtic 4-2 Rangers – 10 Men Won The League
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H64BOxqZh6Y&feature=related
Billy Bhoy supports wee Oscar
22:58 on
13 January, 2014
Ryecatcher,
I sat in a local pub and listened on a wee radio.When Murdo scored the 4th I left to walk home and watch the highlights. I met a neighbour who said the highlights programme was cancelled due to a technicians strike. I thought it was a wind up based on the 7-1 “lenscapgate” till I got into the house!
For the aul yins it must have been deja vu all over again!
I think there was a strike and it wasn’t televised because of that
Celtic 6 – 2 Rangers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT6Yl5UEnEw&feature=related
10 men won the league, Fly the Flag, Fly the Flag
And it was a great big tri-colour as well :-)
Night night CQN, early flight
I should read a full post before responding :-)
winning captains my recollection of the 4-2 game was I had to miss it due to having a trial for Linlithgow rose on that Monday night against Camelon and all I did was ask my juvenile coach the score every 5 mins then at half time in the dressing room no wonder a was getting dirty looks from my team mates in the lithgy team 8 out of 11 players were Huns anyway I played quite well and got offered 200 bangers to sign on after the game and with the hoops winning it was a no brainer.
Celtic 7 – 1 Rangers 19/10/1957
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfwyNR9mvaU
Bobby “wee barra” Collins R.I.P
Good night all it’s good to have a history :))
Thanks Jude2005
leftclick Together we will get justice for the Dam 5
23:03 on
13 January, 2014
Celtic 4-2 Rangers – 10 Men Won The League
Big Roy driving us on…
Jinkyredstar……
Did you have Creamola Foam in your improvised cargoe on that beautiful evening?
Tontine Tim
Jimmy Walsh was a local man from Valleyfield, and the headmaster who took us to the game had taught him apparently but I don’t know if that had anything to do with us getting treated to the match.
Leftclick
That’s the first time I’ve seen that footage- I have seen a much grainier version – the quality and commentating calls into question the ‘strike’ story of the day
Ryecatcher
Both Lemon and Raspberry- puts a nice head on the old El D
Winning Captains
The 4-2 game .
Listened to the game sat on the step of my close . I could tell the score by the volume of the celebrations , loud for them , bedlam for us.
It was a very emotional time for a young boy still short of his twelfth birthday , my mother had passed away exactly three months earlier ,so although I was delighted when a neighbour confirmed the score that feeling of real sadness was still very raw.
Also that night I was heading to London, on the overnight sleeper , with the rest of primary seven year. Buick Makane who posts on here was also on that train ,we had an exchange on here about it a while back but it’s worth repeating.
We suffered a lot of abuse from rankers fans who got on the train , our head teacher was a nun and she got a really hard time from them.
There were five of us in our compartment and when a particularly ugly group opened our door and threatened us it was extremely frightening .
However one of the boys in our group and my friend at the time was able to extract revenge , he had to wait ten years but scoring the winning goal for Celtic in a cup final against them was worth the wait
Leftclick
Had to watch that afore I head both 4-2 & 6-2
Absolutely a Fantastic – Thanks
Jinkyredstar…
Sat an exam once , suffering from the after effects of Bob Marley’s favourite smoking materials and associated paraphernalia….not to be recommended as I was starving for 3 hours and wanted to eat my calculator and Napiers Logarithms book (paperback version….unsalted).
ELD after effects I never had the pleasure of in an exam,but can imagine it would be seen as illegal assistance these days,as it’s successor Buckfast is caffeine charged.
MorecaffeinethanespressocoffeeCSC
Borgo67…..
Wee Joe Miller made me a nice bet @8/1 first Goalscorer that beautiful sunny day at Hampden.
WheresyourtreblegoneSounessCSC