| Match Pictures | Matches: 1971 – 1972 | 1971-72 Pictures |
Trivia 
- Partick Thistle cause one of the greatest cup final shocks of all time.
- Celtic lose despite being over-whelming favourites. Bookies in Glasgow had Thistle at 8/1 om morning of the game.
- ‘In Scotland it’s League Cup final day at Hampden Park, where Celtic meet Partick Thistle, who have no chance.”
Those were Sam Leitch’s closing words on the BBC’s Grandstand’s Football Focus on Saturday, October 23, 1971. - Partick chairman William Reid praises Celtic’s fans who stayed on to the end to applaud the Thistle team receiving the cup
- Jock Stein said he was proud of fans’ reaction in defeat.
- There are stories/urban myths of Rangers fans leaving Ibrox at half time to get to Hampden to see Thistle lift the cup ! Only they know if this is true.
- Anecdote (2018): One member of this site became friends with Alec Rae (Partick Thistle) and asked if he had ever watched a video of the match & he said he watched it every Saturday night at home with a large Scotch. Not sure if Alec Rae was kidding! Alec Rae was assistant at Dundee when Albert Kidd was sent on as a sub on that fateful day in 1985/86 season when Celtic won the league on the last day. Nor sure if he regretted that decision in hindsight!
Review
‘In Scotland it’s League Cup final day at Hampden Park, where Celtic meet Partick Thistle, who have no chance.”
Sam Leitch’s closing words on the BBC’s Grandstand
Celtic badly missed the presence of their injured captain Billy McNeill in central defence (he was out with a leg strain picked up against Dundee the week before) and Thistle attacked from the start with confidence.
Another blow came when Glavin injured Johnstone and he had to withdraw to be replaced by defender Jim Craig. It was unusual for Stein not to have a forward as substitute and he was caught out this time as he had no forward replacement and this affected the shape of the Celtic team.
Thistle had shown the courage to attack and were deserving of their lead.
Despite the incredible 4-0 deficit at half time, Celtic were urged on by captain Bobby Murdoch and only Rough’s fine goalkeeping and bad luck prevented them levelling the tie.
When Thistle received the cup thousands of Celtic fans stayed to sportingly applaud them.
After this match Jock Stein moved quickly to sign both Denis Connaghan and Dixie Deans to bolster his squad.
Teams
Partick Thistle:
Rough, Hansen, Forsyth, Glavin (Gibson), Campbell, Strachan, McQuade, Coulston, Bone, Rae, Lawrie
Goals: Rae (10), Lawrie (15), McQuade (28), Bone (36)
Celtic:
Williams, Hay, Gemmell, Murdoch, Connelly, Brogan, Johnstone (Craig 20), Dalglish, Hood, Callaghan, Macari.
Goal: Dalglish (70)
Referee: W.J. Mullan (Dalkeith)
Att: 62,740
Articles
- Match Report (see below)
Pictures
Articles
The day Hansen and Thistle were a thorn in Celtic’s side (Interview)
”IN SCOTLAND, it’s League Cup final day at Hampden Park, where Celtic meet Partick Thistle, who have no chance.”
Those were Sam Leitch’s closing words on Grandstand’s Football Focus on Saturday, Oct 23, 1971.
Not a single voice across the nation was raised in dissent. Who could argue with such a pronouncement? Managed by the great Jock Stein, Celtic were in the midst of a reign which would bring them nine successive League championships, a team bristling with internationals such as Jimmy Johnstone, Kenny Dalglish, Bobby Murdoch, Tommy Gemmell, Lou Macari and Davie Hay. The previous season they had demolished Don Revie’s Leeds United on their swaggering adventure to the European Cup final against Feyenoord.
Oh, yes, Sam was right, Thistle had no chance. Newly-promoted from the second division and with an average age of under 22, the club had been the butt of every music hall comedian for the best part of a century (“I grew up thinking they were called Partick Thistle Nil” – Billy Connolly), their only claim to fame a Scottish Cup victory in 1921.
And then the teleprinter in the BBC studio began to chicka-chicka-chicka . . .
Celtic 0, Partick 1 (Alex Rae 9 minutes) . . .
Celtic 0, Partick 2 (Bobby Lawrie 15) . . .
Celtic 0 Partick 3 (Denis McQuade 27) . . .
Celtic 0, Partick 4 (Jimmy Bone 37).
The official attendance at kick-off had been 62,470 but by the second half the crowd had swelled as many thousands of Rangers’ fans – alerted to the extraordinary happenings at Hampden – departed Ibrox by car, taxi, bus and train to witness their bitter rivals’ humiliation in what was turning out to be the greatest cup final upset of all time.
Among the stunned faces in the grandstand was 16-year-old Alan Hansen, on the Thistle books as a provisional schoolboy signing, but there in the front row to cheer on his older brother, John, playing at right-back. “It was unbelievable then and do you know what, 35 years on, it’s still as unbelievable today,” recalls Hansen the elder with a fond smile.
”This was Celtic, the best team in Britain. Even without Billy McNeill who was injured, they were frightening. We didn’t even want to go out on the pitch to take a look round before the game because they were out there. When we did venture out, Lou Macari came over to wish me well and say, ‘At least you’ll be going home with a runners-up medal’. He wasn’t being mischievous, he was being kind. Of course, we’d no chance. Some of us were full-timers, but goalie Alan Rough had just qualified as an electrician, centre-half Jackie Campbell was a draughtsman, striker Frank Coulston was a PE teacher, and teenage winger Denis McQuade was studying Classics at Glasgow Uni. The year before most of us had been playing for Thistle reserves against Glasgow Police and Glasgow Transport.
”The whole thing was surreal. We didn’t stay in a hotel overnight as every cup final team now does, so, because I didn’t have car, I caught a bus from my home in Tullibody to Stirling on the morning of the game, the train from Stirling to Glasgow Queen Street, then another bus up to Firhill to board the team coach. On the journey to Hampden our manager, Davie McParland, told us we could win because he was paid to say that kind of thing, but nothing he could say was going to convince us that we stood any hope at all. I mean, how could I even be thinking about winning the cup when I had the job of marking wee Jinky Johnstone? What a player and such a nice guy you could never bring yourself to kick him. Whenever you played against Jimmy he kept up a running conversation. ‘OK, big yin, try harder to get the ball this time’ he’d say. ‘Jimmy,’ I’d plead, ‘just go past me and cross the ball, will you?’ But no, he’d go past, then double back to beat you again . . . and just maybe a third time.”
But Thistle, who played a cavalier 4-2-4 formation, were a team of emerging talents; goalkeeper Alan Rough would make 53 appearances for Scotland – ”Brilliant shot-stopper,” remembers Hansen, “but not so good on crosses. ‘My ball’ he’d shout, followed a few seconds later by, ‘I’ve changed my mind’.” Alex Forsyth (later of Manchester United) and Hansen snr, would become international full-backs, Ronnie Glavin was the thinking man’s Rivelino in midfield, strikers Bone and Coulston had a telepathic understanding and while left-winger Bobby Lawrie was the ‘Human Bullet’, on the left-touchline ‘Daft’ Denis McQuade could be Pele or Basil Fawlty, depending on his whim.
”We’d beaten Motherwell 7-2 earlier in the season but lost 8-3 at Pittodrie, so you never really know which Thistle would show up. Throughout history the club had been known as the ‘great unpredictables’, but we made unpredictability into an art form. That’s why even at half-time, the general consensus in the dressing room was that though we’d probably lose 5-4, at least we weren’t going to get gubbed. When did the realisation dawn that we might actually win the cup? With about 10 minutes to go when we were leading 4-1 (Dalglish having scored in the 67th minute) and the Thistle fans suddenly began singing.”
Hansen describes the closing minutes and the subsequent trophy presentation ‘as a blur, though I do remember spotting young Al in the crowd’) before it was back to Firhill to change into their finery for the celebration party in the Buchanan Hotel. “Typical Thistle, when we got back to the ground, no one could find a key to the front door. With all the TV cameras there to film our jubilant home-coming, it was all highly embarrassing.”
The following season brought the first of five knee operations which would scupper a move to Manchester United and eventually end Hansen’s playing days six years later at the age of 27. Although he would then enjoy a highly successful career as a retail director with the Abbey National, he still regrets what might have been. “Alan’s fabulous career with Liverpool provided compensation of sorts but, yes, it was heart-breaking when I was told ‘that’s it, you’ll never kick a ball again’,” he said. “But I have some wonderful memories and hilarious interludes.”
Memories such as his Scotland inter-national debut in a 1-0 victory over Belgium in a European Nations’ Cup qualifier in 1971 and his visit to Brazil the following summer for a four-team tournament. In the 2-2 draw against Yugoslavia in Belo Horizonte, Hansen came off the victor in his personal duel against the great Dragan Dzajic and though his dicky knee prevented him from playing against Brazil, he did experience the thrill of warming up in the Maracana stadium alongside Denis Law, Billy Bremner and Asa Hartford preparing to meet World Cup winners Rivelino, Jairzinho, Clodoaldo, Gerson and Tostao.
But what of those ‘hilarious interludes’? Hansen recalled: “The spring after the cup final, an old England international arranged for us to go on a pre-season tour to the Far East, either for a share of the gate receipts or first class all the way. Thinking Thistle wouldn’t be much of a draw in Indonesia or Malaysia, David McParland grabbed the first-class option and to be fair, it was Krug champagne and luxury all the way. In Jakarta we were due to play Lokomotiv Plovdiv, or someone like that, which we imagined would attract a crowd of about 200, so it came as something of a surprise when we arrived at the stadium to be greeted by 60,000 Indonesian fitba’ fans. Our ‘benfactor’ had billed the game as Scotland versus Bulgaria.
”We then played the Indonesian and Malaysian national teams before stopping off in Athens, where we played Olympiakos and where, when our tour organiser was stopped at customs and had to open his suitcase, we found it stuffed with readies. There must have been pounds 30,000 stashed away. Not many people put one over on Davie McParland.”
After McParland left the club to join Celtic as Stein’s assistant, came the arrival of his successor, ex-Lisbon Lion Bertie Auld, a man with a great sense of humour, except when it came to football. “There was no one quite like Bertie,” Hansen said. “We’d been beaten 7-0 and 8-0 in successive games, so Bertie called in for training on the Saturday morning before the next game, announced the team and explained, ‘We’re bottom of the League, you’re confidence is gone, so we’re going to have a practice game against invisible opponents’.
”Now it’s really difficult playing against nobody. Bertie was an intimidating presence and poor John Kennedy, the left-back, who was supposed to ping the ball down the touchline to the winger, hoofed the ball into the terraces four times in a row. Eventually, when John did succeed in finding the winger, he had to cross it to the near post for striker Joe Craig. Three times in a row he headed wide. After 30 minutes it was still 0-0, at which point four of the players who had been included in the team were promptly dropped.
”Someone, and I think it might even have been Alan, said that when he was growing up he didn’t know whether he wanted to be a footballer or to run away and join the circus. At Thistle, we got to do both.”
(c) 2006 Telegraph Group Limited, London
The Daily Telegraph
Jimmy Bone recalls Partick Thistle’s incredible cup final triumph over Celtic 50 years on
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/international/jimmy-bone-recalls-partick-thistles-incredible-cup-final-triumph-over-celtic-50-years-on-3430189
It seems something worth celebrating that making an appointment to discuss someone’s heroics in a game that took place half-a-century ago involves slotting into a work schedule.
By Alan Pattullo
Saturday, 23rd October 2021, 7:00 am
Jimmy Bone, now 72, is still coaching at Wallace High School, in the shadow of the Wallace Monument in Stirling.
He is helping maintain a tradition of sporting excellence stretching back many years and including Scotland rugby star Finn Russell and the Caldwell footballing brothers. It’s 11.15am in the morning and Bone has already been out on the playing fields with kids.
He is also just off the phone to Dick Campbell, manager at one of Bone’s former clubs Arbroath, and who he helps by studying future opponents.
“Right, where do you want to start?” Bone asks, placing his hands on the knees of his Adidas tracksuit in a corner of the school staff room.
This week of all weeks, it can only be one place.
There are many reasons to commend the brilliantly maverick Partick Thistle side of the early 1970s, including of course that League Cup triumph over Celtic 50 years ago this very afternoon. Something else distinguishing them is they are all still here – “all above ground,” as Bone phrases it – and able to tell their stories.
This is in contrast with Celtic, sadly. It seems very poignant to note that five players who featured for them that afternoon are now in the high stand. This does not even include the late Billy McNeill, who missed the game because of illness.
“It was a factor,” says Bone, who ended up being team-mates with McNeill not long afterwards. “Billy was such a leader for Celtic. When I joined, you immediately knew who The Man was. Billy was.
“He was a leader. He made sure everything was right. On that particular day they did not have that leader. We started so well and scored the first goal they did not have anyone to go and gel and bring them back round. If Billy was playing maybe he would have calmed things down and got things sorted.”
Maybe. Reviewing footage of the match underlines just how irrepressible Thistle were. It really was a case of the Maryhill Magyars. Among the repercussions, Bone’s abrupt sale included, was Alan Hansen helping Liverpool to three European Cups and umpteen other titles. It’s said that watching his brother John taste such glory in unforgettable style convinced him to play football seriously having already shown enough promise to consider golf as a professional.
“One thing we did have – when we were hot, we were really good,” says Bone. “And when we were not hot, we lost goals because we had four forwards, two wingers and two strikers, and we had two full backs – Hansen and [Alex] Forsyth – who bombed on. On our day, we were capable of beating anyone.
“Playing for Thistle was great,” he adds. “They had a real loyal support. They would turn up on a Saturday not knowing what to expect but they got behind the team anyway. If they got beaten, they were still there the next game anyway. If they won? It was all singing and dancing. They had a real hard core. It was a fabulous club to play for.”
It seems fitting that the current Thistle are a glorious reincarnation of such freewheeling times, scoring six in their last outing, away at Hamilton Accies, four in their last home game against Ayr United and in between times losing 2-0 in the SPFL Trust trophy to Queen of the South. Ian McCall’s side will wear sponsorless, 1971-style shirts today against Dunfermline.
Those who originally filled them have been in demand this week of course and all of them, minus 82-year-old father of the team Hughie Strachan and Ronnie Glavin, who turned 70 earlier this year, will be in attendance at Firhill this afternoon.
They will then gather tomorrow for an anniversary lunch at the Hampden Park venue where, on October 23, 1971, they were four up before Celtic had finished their starters.
Jimmy Bone shows off the League Cup, 50 years on from the triumph.
Jimmy Bone shows off the League Cup, 50 years on from the triumph.
Bone walked the fourth goal past Celtic ‘keeper Evan Williams just 37 minutes in to send the information superhighway of the day – basically reporters spluttering into phone receivers – into meltdown. Legend has it Rangers fans swarmed to Hampden to get in on the action. And we’ve all heard stories of Grandstand anchor Frank Bough reacting to the news of the half-time score from Hampden as if, well, he’d just heard that Thistle were four goals up at half-time against Celtic in a cup final. Say again? “We’ll get that checked,” he told viewers while adjusting his earpiece.
While it is of course unusual to be four goals up in a cup final against anyone, let alone opponents of Celtic’s class, it doesn’t seem outrageous for Thistle to harbour belief they had a chance. According to Bone, that’s exactly how they felt. They’d already beaten Rangers that season and would go onto finish seventh in an 18-team league. Hardly no-hopers.
“Six of that team went on to represent Scotland, and four of us went to Celtic and one, Alex Forsyth, went to Rangers as well as Man Utd.
“Roughie [Alan Rough], Gibby [Johnny Gibson], Ronnie Glavin and me went to Celtic.
“On that day, it was not a fluke. We were capable of doing that against a lot of teams. One time we scored seven against Motherwell.
“Sometimes we would lose heavily too,” he adds, truthfully.
.
Thistle’s response to the triumph was wonderfully Thistle – they spent a week in Blairgowrie. The Perthshire base was reckoned to be convenient for the midweek clash with Dundee – rescheduled from the Saturday – and for a third game in an emotional, draining week v Aberdeen at Pittodrie, which they lost 7-2.
“We stayed up in Blairgowrie, which I don’t really think that was the best decision,” says Bone now. “We were doing a lot of sitting around. We drew 0-0 with Dundee. That was a good performance, that was a right good Dundee team. Then we went to Aberdeen, we just didn’t have any legs left. Everything hit us. Bang. But we recovered.”
Bone was sold to Norwich City a couple of months later and missed out on Thistle’s foray into Europe, where they lost to Hungarian side Honved – in fact, Bone wouldn’t make his European debut until the grand age of 35, while at Hearts.
There was a lot to fit in before then, including locating Norwich on a map. He was part-time at the time – Bone calculated as many as three of the Thistle team against Celtic had day jobs – and so Norwich City’s plan to sign him had to be relayed to Bone down a coal pit in Fallin. He had just completed an apprenticeship as an electrician.
“You know, it was my first day as a tradesman,” he says. “I went to part-time then I had spell when I went full-time and then I thought, wait a wee minute, I have just left a trade here, I only have a matter of eight or nine months to do, so I went back part-time. When we won the cup final I was part-time – I was on night shift.”
“Jackie Campbell was also part time, Coulston and myself. We trained the Tuesday and Thursday night. I was an electrician, I worked in the mines. After I qualified, on my first day, I got the phone call to come up the pit. It was manager David McParland. He said, ‘grab an overnight bag, you are coming to stay with me tonight. We are going down to Norwich tomorrow for talks.’ In those days it was a case of you were going. We did not have the power players have now.”
While heading to Norwich hadn’t been his intended career path, it was the making of him. Talk to any Canaries fan of a certain age about Bone and their eyes will mist up. While it now might seem like they are perennially yo-yoing between the Premier League and Championship, Bone helped Norwich secure promotion in the last few weeks of that same, enchanted 1971-72 season before scoring their first-ever goal in the English top-flight, against Everton.
As now, Norwich found it hard going and manager Ron Saunders felt he needed some midfield grit. Bone was on the road again, this time to Sheffield United, in exchange for Trevor Hockey. It broke up a “Cross-Bone” partnership with David Cross that seemed born to be.
Remarkably, the transfer took place days before Norwich were due to take part in the League Cup final against Spurs, which meant Bone, who had played in the quarter-final and semi-final wins over Arsenal and Chelsea, was denied making League Cup final appearances on either side of the Border in successive seasons.
Norwich lost the final 1-0 to Spurs. Bone, meanwhile, made his debut for Sheffield United a few miles away at Highbury, scoring in a 3-2 defeat.
“A Scotsman called Jim Blair, formerly of Airdrie, replaced me,” he reflects. “He was a completely different player to me. He was a dribbler guy whereas I had a really good partnership with a guy called David Cross. Crossy was good in the air, I was able to run onto things. Jim Blair was more about having the ball at his feet. It was a strange one.”
Aside from playing there once, for next club Sheffield United, he has never returned to Norwich, though not through lack of trying. He is after all in their Hall of Fame and is bound to be warmly received.
“One of the times I was intending to go I was at Prestwick, the flight could not go because of snow,” he recalls. “But it wasn’t at Prestwick, it was at Norwich! It never snows in Norwich!”
He also had to call off from attending Musselburgh-born former skipper Duncan Forbes’ funeral two years ago due to work commitments.
He will return one day because the ties are strong. It’s not quite how he feels with regards Celtic, where he experienced a frustrating time after Jock Stein brought him back to Scotland after a short, productive spell at Bramall Lane, where he scored nine times in 31 league appearances. Bone just wasn’t given the chance to get going in a side packed with talent, and when he did finally score a goal, in a win over Dunfermline, he was sold days later – to Arbroath.
It’s where, he says, he got his “sparkle” back. There was something about Gayfield. Even the wind seemed to blow for him. “The ball just seemed to run for me there,” he says. “Whereas in other places it would go out of play.”
St Mirren’s Love Street was another place that suited him, playing in the No 10 position, with attacking players of the calibre of Doug Somner, Frank McDougall, Frank McAvennie and Billy Stark. There’s a recently completed mural at the new stadium of Bone holding aloft the Anglo-Scottish Cup, won in 1980. Bone is in the Hall of Fame there, too. He left St Mirren, via two summer spells with Toronto Blizzard, to sign for Hong Kong Rangers.
On his return from the Far East, there was a message waiting for him at the airport. “It was Alex MacDonald from Hearts, wanting me to make contact …”
After all the coming and going, all the highs and the lows, all the travelling, this was the maroon shirt – no disrespect to Arbroath – that he had always really wanted to pull on.
Although his mother was from Glasgow, her family had been Hearts. His father was Rangers and the young Jimmy – the eldest of six – went along with that just so he could see some football on a Saturday afternoon, hence why his boyhood hero was Ibrox striker Jimmy Millar.
But he kept a light burning for Hearts which is why there was a grin almost as wide as the Alexanders logo on his chest when he signed for the Tynecastle side in 1983
“I was also offered the chance to go to Hibs, they wanted me to do some coaching as well. I said no because I wanted to play for as long as I could. And also, well, I am a bit of a Jambo.”
He quickly became a part of the scenery. According to John Robertson, one room in the old Tynecastle main stand was christened “Jimmy Bone’s tea room”.
“To be fair it was not just Jimmy Bone’s,” he says. “It was Jimmy Bone and Willie Johnston’s tea room. The manager was Alex MacDonald, the assistant was Sandy Jardine, and there was me and Willie Johnston. The papers would give it: ‘Oh, it’s Dad’s army..’
“So if any of the young boys were stepping out of line, me and Bud we would ask them to come and see us in the ‘tea room’. ‘Why should we not go and tell the manager’, it was that kind of stuff.
“There would be a knock on the door, and we would say: ‘why do you think you should come in here? And we’d say, ‘ok you have a cup of tea’, or it was a case of ‘nah, you spoke back to one of the experienced players, you have not shown enough respect,’ and we would throw them out.”
It was undeniably old school but Hearts youngsters such as Robertson seemed to benefit from this treatment, bunking up with Bone – who he stills refers to as “Da’” – on way trips. The pair remain close. Sandy Clark was Bone’s more than decent replacement, but who knows, things might have been different had the veteran still been around to come on and save the day in the final league game of the 1985/86 season.
“I was actually coaching in Zambia,” he recalls. He listened to the Dens Park denouement in the toilet. “It was the only place I could get reception!” He mimics holding a crackling radio against his ear. “It was crazy.”
Perhaps not quite as crazy as what happened 50 years ago today. However one judges it, Bone’s lived a life – and is still going strong.