T Cairns (2)
N Harris (2)
J Bowie
Honeyman
Match Information
Attendance: 30,000
Referee: T Dougray (Bellshill)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
Call it Partick Thistle’s day. Perhaps the score exaggerates their superiority in some way. I grant you it does. But – handsome is as handsome does. Football has peculiar way of levelling up the ifs and the buts. The Thistle have played better and had less to show. Now it was their turn to reap the harvest. But I should like to make it clear that if fortune was with the Thistle on occasion they proved more than worthy of her favours. Heaven, they say, helps those who help themselves. No one who was at Firhill Park can deny that the Thistle showed a fine facility for helping themselves. In fact, it was mainly when they were handing out the goals to themselves that they looked like a team that was winning by a comfortable margin. Anyone dropping in between the goals in the first half could scarcely have believed that Rangers were getting left so far behind in the one thing that natters – I mean scoring. Like all the games I have seen between the Thistle and Rangers at Firhill, it was an exciting one to watch, fast and brimful of incident. The men were as keen as razors. It has always been the same ever since the days of old Inchview, when, in a memorable Glasgow Cup tie, I say the Thistle, with their famous Wilkie-Campbell wing, beat Rangers by a goal to nothing, and had to replay – and lose – because they didn’t have goal nets up. Time brings changes, but it cannot knock the edge off these Rangers-Thistle matches. But let’s back to Firhill. The first goal arrived after ten minutes, play and up to that point Rangers had seemed the likelier to get it. But they didn’t. Gordon had made a dash through when he was up-ended, and then Duncan flashed in a shot which came back off a Thistle man. Matters were looking quite well for Rangers when the ball was sent through to Harris. He might have gone on himself, but, instead, he passed out to Honeyman, who went ahead a bit and then centred beautifully. The Rangers’ defence had allowed itself to be drawn towards Honeyman’s wing, and when the ball came over we saw a goal all the way, for three Thistle men were waiting for it, and only poor Hempsey to challenge them. It was Leitch who headed past him. Thereupon the Thistle went away on a regular romp and the defence of the Rangers being obviously too slow and too lacking in resource for the nimble Thistle forwards, we were not surprised when Honeyman took another pass from Harris, galloped round Muir, centred, as before, and saw Bowie head the ball across Hempsey’s guard on to the far post and so into the net. Once more Manderson and others were missing. All this was a trifle severe on the Rangers’ forwards, who, if slower and more easily checkmated than the Thistle lot, had done nothing to deserve being saddled with a leeway of two goals. They made an extra effort to mend matters, but with Morrison and McMullan repeatedly upsetting the wing combination, and Lister able to make no impression on Hamilton, there was not much danger in the attacks. It was altogether different with the Thistle forwards. Their quickness in passing and rapidity in making ground fairly ‘found out’ the Rangers’ defence. It was, in fact, an old story being re-told. There was plenty of football in the Rangers’ team were they given leisure to produce it. The Thistle were not allowing any leisure, nor did they want any for themselves. Without putting much work on the ball, they went for goal like so many spring-heeled Jacks, and as showing how well their style paid them; Honeyman shot a great third goal after the Rangers’ defence had been tried in a tangle. I liked the way the Rangers team took the gloves off at this. The grand manner was put away for another day. No one set so good an example as Cairns. His ardour was without limit. Time and again he led his men in, but the response was only indifferently good, for Lister and Bennett did not have the driving force necessary, and Duncan was in the position of having to search for the ball. Still, Rangers were able to pin the Thistle to the defensive; but their best efforts had little luck, and their other ones deserved none. And then, just to show how easy scoring was, Harris half a minute from the interval, dribbled through and shot a fourth goal. I thought Hempsey might have saved this one, but the business possibly was on his nerves of some of the others. With a four goal deficit, it looked as if Rangers ought to be getting the invitations out and – ‘no flowers, by request.’ But it wasn’t a wake yet. The restart showed that Rangers were only becoming, so to speak, awake. Again it was Cairns who set the lead, and a bigger-hearted display against heart-breaking odds I never saw. He let Paterson in for a centre whose swerve nearly puzzled Neil, then he gave Lister one or two passes which were not accepted, but he tried and tried again, and at length, after seventeen minutes, he saw Paterson well in, and when the Doctor centred, Cairns was there to meet the ball in front of goal and head it into the net. The match took a new shape all at once. Going at great pressure right across the forward line, and with the half-backs driving on the ball to some purpose, Rangers actually seemed as if they might have to cancel the invitations after all. Duncan for a time had been idle – through no fault of his own – but now he came into the game with the rest, and the Thistle defence were busy, every man of them. The thrusts made at Neil were bound to tell, and sure enough a dashing run and centre by Duncan were capped by Cairns heading a second goal. From 4-0 to 4-2, and Rangers going like a house on fire! The excitement rose, and players as well as spectators were on edge. Every game has its turning-point, and I think I saw it here when Cairns bustled in to make a glorious opening for Lister. A goal here and anything might have happened. But the occasion was too much for the centre; he shot wide, and neither he nor any other Ranger ever got such another chance. For a little after this Rangers held their grip of the Thistle, but the home forwards opened out in time, and with the alertness and dash of the first half, they so outmanoeuvred the Rangers defence that a pretty slip past from Leitch sent Harris in to shoot a brilliant fifth goal from a fair range, which ended the scoring in as breezy and as exciting a match as I have seen for a long time. It was not any sustained brilliance of play that made the match so good to watch. Rather was it the rapid action and the unexpected result. The Thistle’s four goals of the first half were like lightning strokes. They were not in keeping with the run of the game. Only the one scored by Honeyman was obtained as the result of sustained pressure. But then, that brings out the fatal weakness of the Rangers defence. Within fourteen minutes they lost three goals, and if it hadn’t been that the forwards were able to keep the ball away from them for longish spells they probably would have lost more. From goal out to half-back the Thistle were better than Rangers. The Rangers defence was all in pieces. If Manderson and Muir were at fault, their halfs cannot be exonerated. It was not that they were beaten by the quick inrushes of the Thistle forwards, but that they did not get back in time to lend a hand. It was the same sort of game as that in which the Hearts beat the Rangers by 4-0 at Ibrox. Not only did the Thistle halfs tackle more keenly, but when beaten they never failed to recover in time to assist Adams and Bulloch. That is why Rangers had to work twice harder for their two goals than the Thistle for their five. Lister failed Rangers in centre, whereas the Thistle were strong in that position with Neil Harris. There was a world of meaning in that, especially when you keep in mind that the Rangers forwards did more pressing than the Thistle vanguard. But, again, though the Thistle had no such worker as Cairns, their wings were more deadly because quicker on the run. I think, in fact, that the game might be best summed up by saying that it was played too fast for Rangers
