A Venters 18
Delaney 54
Match Information
Attendance: 60,000
Referee: H Watson (Glasgow)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
With the hour, cometh the man! Just when the Selectors are on the point of asking the BBC to broadcast an SOS pleading for news about an outside-rights whereabouts for the German game, there entereth the scene a bright young man in a Light Blue jersey. The team sheet called him Fiddes. The Rangers fans called him a godsend. But what of Morrison, the Celts left-back, called him is nobodys business! In this game of moods and fancies, Fiddes was the cherry on top of the cake. The cake itself wasnt so bad but it needed the cherry. Frankly, I had rather forgotten this young man. Im ashamed of that. For Fiddes is going to mean a lot to us if he carried on like this. His play was an object lesson, or should have been, to the Celtic forwards. Fiddes didnt fiddle. Buchan and Coy, did. And any tune they did manage was squeezed out. The boldness and fighting qualities of rangers right-winger carried an unholy distress to the Celtic rear lines. Morrison just couldnt get him under any sort of control. And even the assistance of Paterson simply meant that two Celts instead of one were left lamenting. On the other wing, the cocky wee Kinnear was in his cheekiest mood. Indeed, the difference between the two sets of wingers hit one like a wet cod-fish. Could this be Delaney, the man who looked a million-dollars last season. He was hesitant puzzled and woefully slow in decision. Repeatedly he allowed himself to be cajoled into an impossible position, so that his final touch meant a goal kick to Rangers. Murphy, too, was terribly ordinary. I think this had a great effect on the rest of the Celtic team. They had a right to expect some relief from their wingers. But when it became evident that every second ball sent to the wings and not likely to come back, Crum and Coy had to try the down-the-middle stuff. But the big difference between the teams, as I saw it, was the dilatoriness of the Celts in possession compared with the slickness of the Rangers in similar circumstances. Time and again I saw a celt move clear with the ball at his feet. Then, in a twinkling, the Ranger who had just missed the ball, or been deprived of it, whisked after him and dispossessed him. This happened too often to be merely incidental. Rangers were far nippier. They sent a wire when about to part. Celts sent a post-card. The result wont do anybody any harm. It was just about correct, in view of Celtics brighter second half. The first half was definitely in favour of Rangers. Not so much from a point of view of consistent attacking as incisive attacking. One never knew when Fiddles or Kinnear was going to tear into the goal area, or when the perky Main or Venters was going to slip through on his own. And the picture of the towering Smith, alert for any chances, couldnt have been a bed-jacket to Celts. Buchan and McDonald were clever ball workers when they got the time to show it. But, although they periodically put the Ibrox defenders in something akin to panic, they failed to look like putting the ball into the net. Willie Buchan is proving a great disappointment to me. In the two games I have watched him this season, he has been pinned down to the commonplace. George Brown, master of the delayed tackle, beat him four times out of six a pretty bad average for the man in possession. McDonald was too like Buchan in method. Celts badly needed a go-getter. It might have been better to have kept the pugnacious little Crum in his own position and taken a chance with any one of the reserves at centre. Anyhow, it was a Celtic front line that seemed to want to wear the ball out, and themselves in the process. Rangers goal was a slick and precise affair. Smith beat Miller and trailed the ball away out to Fiddles. Without delay, the winger brushed Morrison aside and swept it back towards the far post. Kennaway was tempted out and lost. There were no fewer than three Rangers players waiting to head it home. I give Venters the credit, although there was some difference of opinion in the Press box. Now we had a Buchan-Brown double act. Buchan kidded Brown to the huge amusement of the Celtic crowd. But while he was still wearing the smile of victory, the fair-headed Ranger whipped round in front of him again and nipped the ball away to the great glee of the Rangers bunch. It was good-humoured stuff, of course. The next item was a marvellous twisting shot of Smiths from an acute angle, which Kennaway was glad to see come to him near his bottom waistcoat button. Then Crum whipped a ball into the goal which Murphy headed along the cross-bar with Jerry Dawson looking a bit wandered. And just here let me say that the Rangers keeper was in a most surprising mood. He dropped more balls and fluffed more goal-kicks in this one game than he did all last season. And darn it if Kennedy wasnt almost as bad. Indeed, both defences were definitely rocky at times. It wasnt until Celtic equalised nine minutes after the interval that the game got really exciting. Murphy sent over a corner-kick. The ball bobbed about in Rangers goal area, where various Ibrox men were caught on the one leg and couldnt get in a strong enough kick to send the ball clear. Ultimately it bobbed up in the air, and Delaney adroitly guided a header out of Dawsons reach. Rangers ran off and scored with a fast shot by Kinnear, which forced itself through Kennaways outstretched hands. But he was rightly whistled off-side, although the whistle was terribly late in sounding. Celtic put some pep into their play now, and Dawson almost licked his card clean with a valiant save from a Buchan thunderbolt. Cheyne was the best of four backs who were often in trouble, mostly of their own making. Ive never seen Bobby Hogg hang on the back of the cart so often before. Brown and Kennaway were more effective than Geatons and Paterson. Some of Browns movements about the field were as liquid. Miller was a better pivot than Jimmy Simpson, who doesnt appear to me to be yet completely fit. This flaxen-haired Celtic centre-half has a great future, I am sure. I liked his flair for the clearance-cum-pass. He must curb his desire to run up with the play, however. Once or twice, he was caught out of position. No real centre-half of today should ever travel past the mid-line, yknow! Ive told you about the others. Not at all a bad game. But what a game it might have been with McGrory and McPhail in the old battle togs!
