Thornton 25, xx
Yardley
McConnell 71, 84
A Venters 87
S Symon 90
Match Information
Attendance: 20,000
Referee: William Webb (Glasgow)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
A shall know time is beginning to take its toll id I ever experience difficulty in recalling what happened at Somerset Park, Ayr on the 31st day of December 1938. For ai and 20,000 others witnessed one of the greatest football dramas of this or any other generation. And it all took place in the last six minutes. Crash the cymbals for the entry of John McKenzie. Hold everything for that Shattering shot from thirty yards. See Jerry Dawson dive despairingly along the full length of his goal. Listen to the thud of leather against wood. Watch the ball rebound out to the unmarked McConnell. Groan if you are a Ranger. Kick up merry hell if youre Ayr. For before Dawson has time to move McConnell had placed the ball past his outstretched body into the net. Three-two for Ayr! The Auld Toon is celebrating already. Theres only six minutes to go . . . and what can happen in the brief space of six minutes? What indeed? Delirious sons and daughters of Auld Ayr decided to stay on and gloat over the discomfiture of the mighty Rangers. Five minutes now. Still all merry and bright. Four minutes. Ditto. Three minutes. Of all the - Some Ayr defender is foolish enough to concede a free kick on the fringe of the 18-yard line. The Somerset boys line up in human chain fashion. We see Venters, the inscrutable, pondering over the problem of how to do it. A battering-ram drive? Nope. A gentle lob? More like it, bit not quite. Alec shoots just high enough over the head of the outside ember of the chain with exquisite judgement, and Hall, who has been unsighted, is too late with his dive to prevent the ball from carrying into the net. What a change now! Our Ayr friends are sobered up again. The Rangers contingent is daft with delight at a point being saved. And on it goes again in the same super-charged atmosphere. Two minutes to go. Still all square. One minutes. No difference. And then the most shattering blow of all. Again, a needlessly conceded free kick. Brown lobs into the jaws of the goal. They footer about a bit. Kinnear has a real slam at it. Hall pounces out to it, but only succeeds in playing it out to the foot of Scott Symon. He rips it into the net. Rangers lead 4-3. Forty-five seconds later to intermittent cheering and groaning Willie Webb points to the pavilion. Its all over. Consider the circumstances as I have placed them before you, and tell me if there is another team, apart probably from Celtic, in all the land that would have fought back the way those Rangers fought? You will agree almost any other side would have packed in gently when they found themselves a goal down, away from home, with only a minute or two remaining. So, while you are sympathising with Ayr mind you, they played well enough and courageously enough to merit a point remember that a victory won as Rangers won it here is something far removed from ordinary events in football. The game? Well, it was a real hum dinger even before the sensational moments near the close. All the way through, in fact. Rangers has a 2-1 lead they scarcely deserved at half-time. Thornton had both goals, The first with the foot and the second with the head. Both gems. Yardley had the one in between that was Ayrs. It served to emphasise the vale of a long throw specialist like Ross. The ex-Ranger threw in a ball to the near post. Dimmer managed to keep it in play with a beautiful back header. Dawson was left standing, and Yardley had an easy job to plot the ball into the net. The early part of the first half was mostly Rangers, nut the Ayr fellows gradually found their second wind, and little McConnell brought the roof off with his equaliser in twenty-six minutes. The rest of it you know. Ayr were splendid in defence, with Currie a positive giant. The forward line didnt respond too well to the subtle prompting of Johnny McKenzie. A fatal hesitancy on the part of the extreme wingers time and again led to promising attacks being snuffed out. Yardley must be bracketed with McKenzie as best forward. George Brown returned to captain Rangers and play a fairly sound game into the bargain. I thought, however, all three Ibrox half-backs were wishing the going hadnt been so hard. Forwards stars were Venters and Thornton with daft things and brilliant things from Kinnear time about
