Match ended 0-0
Match Information
Attendance: 16,000
Referee: Peter Craigmyle (Aberdeen)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
They gave us a full circus at Brockville yesterday. All the fun of the fair. And although some of the fun wasnt exactly fair the result was fair enough. What a corking, snorting, lung-bursting game! That ball was thumped, smashed, toed, banged and prodded from one end of the pitch to the other. A game crammed with motion and emotion. Spectators standing to their feet screaming Penalty! and others just sitting screaming. The biggest scream, of all is that goalkeepers McKie and Dawson came out of this frenzied power-play with dirt on their faces but none on their slates! Maybe I once saw a more heart-pounding game, but nobodys gonna get me to unlock the safe deposit of my memory. I know when Im satisfied. And the man who came away from Brockville unsatisfied is meaner than the gut who swallows a gallon of antifreeze sos he wouldnt have to buy a winter overcoat! I dont like picking one player out of any game. But one of these players didnt require picking out. He stood out. Seventeen-year-old Willie Thornton. The oomph boy! His play vas a joy. The boy who defies the adage that you cant make bricks without straw. He made bricks and fired them. That they didnt get home is the greatest tribute I can pay to the glorious quartette, McKie, McPhee, Peat and Shankly. Yet I do remember more than one critic declaring Falkirk would lose because they hadnt a strong defence! That defence was strong enough to bend a crossbar by looking at it! Rangers had a positively brilliant first half. Yet, despite the uncanny work of Thornton and McNee in particular, Shankley and Co bailed out the Falkirk craft so quickly the Light Blues seldom got time to fire a torpedo. At half-time Rangers were so far ahead on play they were leaning out the back of the bus waving to their opponents. Tommy Craig must have stuck a in in every Falkirk player during the interval. They came out jumping mad. Whoa! The tables were turned and set for eleven Falkirk players. Carruthers had chances, so had Keyes, Napier and Dawson. Penalty-area panic destroyed some; sheer bad luck many others. Napier rammed one against the bottom of the upright with Jerry Dawson in square four. The Ibrox fighting spirit was challenged. Thornton outwitted Shankley at the other end, and as the keeper came out, cutely cut the ball for the far corner. Peat, pounding goalwards, threw himself into the air and sprawled his legs forward just in time to edge it over for a corner. The Falkirk man next to me shut his eyes and groaned, Tell me when the ball goes out for a shy its the only time I can look. The pendulum of the game nearly swung itself off the hook. Everybody wanted a goal. And everybody was scared there would be one! A goal has often saved a game. It would have ruined this one. Unless we could have had one at each end. When this feverish 90 minutes came to an end, the crowd was as exhausted as the players! Never mind a detailed criticism of the players. The twenty-two of them gave us the greatest period of forgetfulness and remembrance possible. The failings of the few were cancelled out by the greatness of the many
