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Scottish Cup Final 1965 – The launchpad to the Golden Era under Jock Stein
Trivia
- Celtic came out of the last game with Partick Thistle with a few knocks but nothing serious. Billy McNeill had injured a calf muscle but was declared fit. In the week between the two games Jock Stein would indulge in mind games with the media as to what would be the team for the Cup Final. He took the team down to Largs and they prepared there. By the Wednesday he felt confident enough to release the team list to the press. Gemmell and Gallacher would come back in and Auld would go back to outside left (with a roving brief) with Hughes back at centre forward and Chalmers at outside right. Jim Kennedy and Jimmy Johnstone missed out.
- Celtic’s first senior trophy win since the League Cup final in 1957.
- Jock Stein’s first trophy as Celtic manager
- The first side in Scottish cup history to win the Scottish cup coming back from being behind twice in the game.
- The launch pad to the Golden Era under Jock Stein.
- Celtic actually lost their next game against Dunfermline only 4 days later 5-1 in the league.
- Some say it was really Celtic’s first major trophy victory since 1954, as it’s really the Scottish Cup and League that are most pivotal. The League Cup (even back then) was not thought of to be as significant.
- Celtic paraded the trophy to huge croewd at Glasgow’s Central hotel.
Review 
We all know what happened in the years thereafter and those fortunate enough to have lived through it all will have memories to last forever. However, each journey begins with a single step, and the Scottish Cup final of 1965 was Celtic’s first step back to respectability before anything else.
It must be noted that before Jock Stein returned to Celtic as manager, the club had become little more than a vehicle for certain directors to raise their profile in the Catholic communities, and continually meddled in the coaches roles by picking teams, players and tactics above the respective manager’s head.
Celtic hadn’t won a senior trophy since 1957, and disillusionment was rife with various players looking to move on. Billy McNeil was serious about leaving at the end of the season whilst Bobby Lennox was looking to just pack it all in and move to Australia! If Jock Stein had come even just one season later then how history could have been so much different, but from the viewpoint of anyone from back then, Celtic were simply an archaic institution and living off the goodwill in the community rather than attempting to realise and capitalise on their potential.
Jock Stein had made an instant impact with the squad, many great players set to play throughout his reign were already there, and already in his first season he had taken Celtic to the Scottish Cup final, something many ranked as incredible! It was believed that Dunfermline (the opposition) were the favourites to win the match having been pipped to the league title by Kilmarnock. Nevertheless, it’s a cup final and anything is possible, and 108,000 people had paid to watch Celtic push Dunfermline all the way.
Match preparation was being revolutionised at Celtic by Jock Stein, and this was the first big test for the new environment and methods.
A tough match and Dunfermline had taken the upper hand, leading by 2-1 at half-time. Pessimists could see it as the glass half-full but for a man like Jock Stein it was just another challenge to overcome. No team to date had ever won the Scottish Cup final coming back from being twice down. Stein turned to the players and told them “Don’t worry. Just keep plugging away and the rewards will come!”.
The second half kicked-off and Celtic hit back quickly, equalising on 52mins and sending the Celtic support into raptures. The scoreline remained balanced through to the final minutes of the game with a replay expected, but then a late charge with eight minutes to go saw Celtic win a corner. Charlie Gallagher swung in a perfect in-swinger into the box which McNeil connected to and headed the ball into the back of the net. Celtic were in the lead for the first time in the game. Notably, Billy was only in the box as he was pushed by Jock Stein to do so; previously defenders were instructed to stay back and defend. It was an example of the changing mindset within the tactics in the Celtic game, and in this case it had paid dividends.
The final whistle went, and the Celtic fans celebrated like as if it were the league title itself. A self-imposed famine no more for Celtic, and a revitalised side were the cup champions. It wasn’t the pinnacle of the game in Scotland (that’s the league) but it meant so much after having spent so long in the wilderness. The instant success had made the board look increasingly incompetent for all their meddling in years gone by, hampering what could have been. The added bonus was that the winner had come from Billy McNeill, and looking back you couldn’t ask for someone greater on that day to have been the one to have scored it. It set Celtic up perfectly for what the club was to achieve over the next ten years.
For Jock Stein, it was vindication of his ability to the board (and everyone else) that his methods alone were to be the basis on which the first team was to be run, and nothing else. Jock Stein years later remarked: “It wouldn’t have gone as well for Celtic had they not have won this game.”
When Billy McNeill headed the winning goal in 81 minutes he set Stein’s Celtic revolution into overdrive. Bertie Auld deserves great credit for scoring two great goals and using his experience to great effect. However, Stein’s master stroke was to play Bobby Murdoch at right half and he was to become a Celtic great in this role.
If Celtic had been empty-handed with no medals from the season, it might have meant the board would still have felt justified to keep pushing their weight around and meddling in team affairs, but thankfully Jock won out. For the players, it was relief and excitement, a taste of what they had been missing out on for all those years and, more importantly, for what they could get.
A psychological boost and the first real step on the Road to Lisbon.
The Launch Pad to the Golden Era:
The effect of Billy McNeill’s winning goal and it’s effect on Celtic in winning the trophy is summed up in the following lines from “The Glory And The Dream” an excellent book on Celtic’s history by Tom Campbell and Pat Woods:
“For two seconds Hampden’s vast bowl was still,stunned with the sudden shock of decision,and then erupted into bedlam; the roar continued, minute after minute, and it’s prevailing note changed; it was not merely the burst of joy that a goal produces, rather it was a tumultuous welcome to the future and the instinctive realisation by all Celtic’s support that the young men had grown up and that nothing, now, nor in the years to come would withstand their collective spirit.”
How right Messrs. Campbell and Woods were.
Teams
Celtic
Fallon, Young, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Chalmers, Gallacher, Hughes, Lennox, Auld.
Celtic scorers:- Auld 31′, 52′, McNeill 81′.
Dunfermline Athletic
Herriot, W. Callaghan, Lunn, Thomson, MacLean, T. Callaghan, Edwards, Smith, McLaughlin, Melrose, Sinclair
Dunfermline Athletic scorers:- Melrose 15′, McLaughlin 43′.
Ref:- Hugh Phillips (Wishaw).
Att:- 108,800.
Articles
- Match Report (see below)
- I Was There…
- Return To Greatness – Scottish Cup Final 1965
Pictures
Quotes
“The official seal on the return to greatness. Parkhead is Paradise once more.”
Daily Express on the game (1965)
“It wouldn’t have gone as well for Celtic, had they not have won this game.”
Jock Stein on this game years later looking back, reflecting on the importance of the game
“It was my very first cup final so it was a big game for me. Had we been beaten that day, Big Jock may have thought, ‘This team’s not good enough’ and two or three of the boys may have been moved on, you never know.
“It was a hard, exciting game and in the last five minutes everybody was desperate for the final whistle to blow. To finally get my hands on the cup was a great feeling. Winning your first medal was one of the greatest feelings in football.”
Bobby Lennox
“The 1965 Scottish Cup final was so important to me personally and to Celtic Football Club itself. The club hadn’t won anything since 1957 at that point and you could see what the game meant to the Celtic supporters.
“They say there were 135,000 supporters there in 1965 and the experience of scoring and looking around the crowd, in every part of the stadium, was awesome and that never goes away. To me, that image is ingrained in my heart.”
Bertie Auld picked the game out as his most memorable outside of the Lisbon final
Articles
Evening Times 26th April 1965
 Newspaper cuttings in an elastoplast tin |
Match report from The (London) Times, 26th April 1965
Glasgow Herald 26th April 1965
