Kelso 44
Match Information
Attendance: 45,000
Referee: T Dougray (Nitshill)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
This was the match that should long be remembered by Rangers. For different reasons, Dundee also will keep in memory green, though I daresay they would take more pleasure in doing that had their victory been gained without the aid of that little bit of tactics which came perilously near being severely censurable. If the Dundee defenders were not bent upon winning at any price, they took the quickest and most effective way of creating the impression that they were. Of course, the referee awarded Rangers innumerable free kicks, which completely spoiled the run of the play, and the warning, which is unedifying to look on at any time, all went to take the shine off a game that could have done very well without them. For, let me hasten to say, I believe the Dundee defence – there was no Dundee attack worth speaking of – could have pulled the team through by the strength of their dash, resolution and skill. Dundee people had been so sparing of their praise for the team that other people, including myself, who had not seen them, had come to regard their visit to Ibrox as merely an event that would serve as ‘good scoring practice for Rangers. But the game had scarcely commenced when it was impressed upon the 45,000 crowd that for every goal they might get, the Rangers forwards, who had never yet failed to score, would have to work very hard. Well, they never got even one goal, and the whole tale, and the uncommonly weird result, hangs on that. If Dundee had no attack, which is almost literally correct, and played under such a colossal handicap as this implies, and if Rangers had a forward line of such imposing paper appearance as the two members from Newcastle, Duncan and Stewart, applied to it, how comes it that scoring a goal in an hour and a half of trying proved beyond them? I gave you my explanation with all modesty – the absence of James Bowie lost Rangers the match. Of course, I am well aware that theories of bad luck can be advanced, and supported too, by a fair show of reason; but bad luck and good luck come and go in every match in defiance of every human agency. Bowie, on the other hand was out of the team through an ‘Iruman agency’, the authority of which of course no one would think of questioning. I mean the Rangers’ selection committee. But what id Bowie’s absence amount to? Stewart was a straight-in player. He never was able to draw the defence as it is Bowie’s delight to draw it. Nearly all his passes were to Duncan, whether this useful player was unmarked or well-marked. When Stewart tried to serve Reid with the ball it was generally by means of a ball lobbed into the air, and anyone knows that these are the worst sort of passes to give the Rangers’ centre. All this might meant little enough had not Rangers been satisfied to keep the play so much on their right wing. Their forward play remained to the end fatally close and cramped. It suited the Dundee defence exactly, for it amounted to this – that with Lyall and his backs and half-backs packed into defensive phalanx, there were six defenders to beat five attackers, even if occasionally Logan, Galt and Hendry tried hard to push their way through. Well, that was the keynote of the contest – those six Dundee defenders in a stand-up deal with Rangers’ forwards. The defenders won because of their dash and fearlessness, the brilliance of Lyall, and – I readily admit it – the luck of the lot in getting their feet to score able balls that might as easily have gone all the way to the net, so far as their actual intention to prevent them was brought into play. But the worst luck I say fall to Rangers was the flagrant tripping of Paterson and Reid, and the injury to the centre-forward in the second half, which left him a cripple to the end. Galt was off for a time dazed with a knock on the face, but these incidents did not have the material effect on the game that the others had. The play calls for only a brief description. Curiously, in such a game, the first scoring chance came to Skene, when he found himself ahead of Campbell, and then shot wildly over the bar. Rangers had previously been doing all the attack, and they went to it again. Forcing hard, Rangers repeatedly pinned the Dundee backs to their posts, but the shots were never like beating Lyall so safe and certain was he – and so feeble the shots. Now and again the Dundee forwards created a diversion, but in this half they were never again dangerous. When Rangers were hardest pressed, it was by the forcing play of the Dundee half-backs. So the game went on, with Rangers trying and trying again, until three minutes from the interval Dundee were awarded a free kick forty yards out, and straight in front of goal. Kelso, a great force in the game all through, came down the field to take it, and he sent the ball with great pith low into Hempsey. Instead of going down on his knees to it, the goalkeeper bent to gather it, let it run up his left arm and over his shoulder. He made a desperate attempt to recover, but the ball was clearly over the line, and so the fateful goal was scored. In the second half in which play was more one-sided than ever, the incidents that stood out in bold relief were Lyall’s saves from Bennett, Reid, Paterson and Stewart and the narrow escape of Rangers’ goal from a clear away run by Skene and a shot that struck Hempsey and rebounded. Towards the end, when Rangers bombarded the Dundee goal, Hogg brought back all his forwards, and every man was a defender. To Lyall and Kelso primarily, and secondly to the other Dundee defenders, the credit to the sensational victory ids entirely due. They were inspired for the day, which should be a red letter one for all of them. When anything was doing forward Wylie was generally the perpetrator, and some of his runs and centres were cleverly executed. Rangers lost a good deal by the withdrawal of Gordon to left back, rendered necessary by an injury to Muir, in Edinburgh on Monday. Gordon spiked Hogg’s gun effectively, but he would have opened up the game at half. Galt became too fond of making part a three-cornered passing machine with Stewart and Duncan. I sympathise with Logan as captain of the team, and as a player who, resembling a humanised engine, performed wonders in striving to bring the team through with a point at least.
