A Cunningham
S Duncan
McColl
Match Information
Attendance: 40,000
Referee: J. Kelso (Hamilton)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
Celtic will have to find a mascot for their game with Rangers. They have let the Rangers get the better of them there. Possibly that will come as a surprise to more than Celtic, but the fact is Rangers were keeping it dark. But now that the two League matches have been played, and Rangers are away with three points, it will not be giving the Rangers’ secret away to say that their mascot is – John Hempsey, the man from Greenock, the man who once lost the train this season, which saw his side down, the man who did not play against Celtic in the Glasgow Cup final – which was lost by Rangers – and who was not in the team when the Hearts won at Ibrox 4-0 or when Morton beat Rangers at Greenock. All this cast no reflection on Herbert Lock. Had Hempsey been playing on the lost game I do not say he could have made victories of them, but the function of a mascot is to fetch the luck along with him. He does not hand it over to others. Rangers put Hempsey into goal against Celtic at Parkhead ‘just for luck.’ So Celtic could not win, though from many points of view they deserved to. Some hold that they did win; but I don’t agree with that at all. The ball netted by McColl in the second half did not rank as a goal, because previous to Hempsey playing the ball to scorer McColl, the latter was off-side, as was Gallagher. At this period Celtic were playing into the Rangers’ defence at a terrific rate, and a winning goal looked to be coming all the time, so that the disappointment of the offside decision was naturally the keener, and led to some confusion of argument. But the referee had to decide upon the positions of the men before Hempsey had touched the ball to McColl. He may have seemed slow in deciding, but that was not so much the case as that McColl was lightning quick in shooting the ball into the net. Looking to the amount of rain that had fallen the ground was in splendid order, though, of course, heavy, and the play, though patchy, at times attained a high standard. The necessity of taking the field without Cairns was not to the liking of Rangers, but it had to be done, and while Hendry retained the left half position, Bowie stepped into partnership with Paterson. With a bit of a breeze at their backs, Celtic were quickly into their game. The whole-hearted earnestness of their play suggested that they had in mind the old axiom about the ‘first blow’. Gallagher within a minute or two nearly got that in, for racing towards the left, and clear of the defence, he sent along a ball that seemed to be flashing into the net when, instead, it hit the post and rebounded away in the opposite direction. Hard on top of this Reid, when finely placed, headed over from a beautiful centre by Duncan. Coming again in the old style the Celtic forwards puzzled the Rangers half-backs with quick, accurate passing, and again was Gallagher going through when Muir, by a big effort, just caught and charged him off the ball. Rangers’ forwards were being met by such keen tackling half-backs that they were finding it difficult to become linked up. Bowie, however, was controlling the ball cleverly and leading the line well enough to promise an early improvement, and, in fact, it was following some heady forcing play by him that, after eleven minutes Rangers somewhat surprisingly opened the scoring. The ball came from the left, and Johnstone tried to take it as it fell. He skidded it only, and Cunningham, who was on the spot, took two steps and a flying left-foot kick, and away went the ball swiftly swerving towards goal and into the net beyond Shaw’s right-hand reach. The goal was virtually ‘snatched from the burning,’ so to speak, for Celtic had been the more like getting one. But now Rangers took a firmer hold of the opposition, and from a pass by Reid Duncan was going clear away for a rare chance when he was given offside – I thought wrongly. But this did not meet with Celtic’s views, and they were soon putting every ounce of pressure into the attack, sometimes showing a tendency to be a little wild when success did not arrive. They steadied down in time, and at last, after a great tug-o’-war, the equaliser came. Browning, from well out, sent in a hard shot. Hempsey apparently juged that one of his men would stop it, and when it was allowed to reach him he had to get down to it in a terrible hurry. He was on the ground with the ball at his hands when McColl dashed in and kicked it into the net. So justice was served, and not only so, but in just two minutes more it was ‘served’ again, for the Celtic forwards, now with their blood up, rattled into the Rangers’ defence from the centre kick. McAtee gathered a pass on the run, turned inwards and round Muir, and with a great left-foot drive sent the ball tearing across the field, past Hempsey and into the far corner of the net. Here was a dramatic change. Within two minutes the lead transferred from one side to the other! Was it to be a runaway affair now? We know our Celtic, and we know our Rangers, and at a crisis like this anything was possible. But Rangers kept their heads, and met the now hurricane Celtic attack with unflinching resolution, Manderson and Muir setting a fine example in steadiness and coolness. It was some time before the Rangers forwards began to get going again, but they signalised their re-entry into the play with another dramatic event. Duncan, who had been especially idle, was given a pass, and running swiftly along, he finished by laying over aperfect centre. The ball fell at McNair’s feet. He was close in on Shaw, and whether he meant to tap the ball back to the goalkeeper I cannot say, but the fact undoubtedly is that it went into the net off McNair’s foot, and the score was level; again. So ended the scoring for the day, but not the excitement, which in a sense, was only beginning. The second half ebbed and flowed for a little, and then Celtic settled down to force a winning goal. Often it was on the verge of being scored, but never quite. Once Gallagher went clear through, only to see his shot hit Hempsey on the face and disable him for a moment. Twice McMenemy headed over the bar from almost under it, when a nod would have put the ball in the net. Once Logan stopped McColl when he was almost through; and again McAtee tried another left-foot drive that missed by little. These were the ‘narrow’ things, but time and again the Celtic forwards were beaten by the unyielding defence of Manderson and Muir, who often saw the opposition come at them in terrorising style. On the few occasions when the Rangers forwards got on the run they were giving the home crowd the shivers, for both Paterson and Duncan forced corners, but the drama had ended with Celtic disappointed. Rangers more than satisfied. Reflecting upon the game now, I can see a Rangers defence that was top-mark for grit beating back the numberless attacks launched at it by the Celtic forwards, who received much better backing than ever the Rangers vanguard enjoyed. Manderson and Muir was splendid, the Irishman more especially in his and his side’s favour. Muir’s steadiness gave the rearguard fine counter poise. In goal Hempsey may have been a little lucky, He was also brace and clever. The Celtic defence had not a fraction of the work cast on that of the other side, and really the only mistake made was when McNair gave the goal away. Johnstone’s miskick, of course, let Cunningham in for the first goal, but the Gunner’s shot was well worthy of a goal. Celtic got better value from their half-backs than did Rangers, whose middlemen were too often employed in defence to give much help to their forwards. The Rangers half-backs, however, held to their difficult task to the end, and undoubtedly had a share in the draw. Forward Celtic played so much clever football that a less resolute defence than the Rangers one would probably have cracked up long before the end. From first to last Gallagher was the cleverest of the line and in his case there was rank bad luck attached to his failure to score. McMenemy and Browning got going at top form only in the second half, and then they were a warm pair for Gordon and Manderson. Neither, however finished as he can do. McAtee’s game was real good for the bigger portion of the game, and his goal a beauty. The best of the Rangers forwards was Bowie, but the line was very little in evidence in the second half, so seldom then did they find the ball among them
