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Scottish Cup Upset
(by TheHumanTorpedo)
Perhaps due to the club’s origins the title of favourite has never sat too comfortably with Celtic. Indeed during the past 120 years the Bhoys have developed an agonising ability to periodically ensure football’s thirst for the cup shock is quenched. But forget ‘Super Caley…’. Forget Clyde. Forget Artmedia. When it comes to humiliating head-in-hands cup shocks then this is the original and the best – or should that be worst?
This 4-2 defeat at the hands of the amateurs from Barrhead is where Celtic’s tradition to self-destruct in the most embarrassing fashion was born. Take all the ingredients of more recent upsets and throw them into one match and you still won’t come close to this farce. Infighting over pay and media criticism and general dressing room unrest ensured Celtic – arguably the leading club in Britain at the time – would start the game with only seven players.
The reigning Scottish league champions were out-fought and out-played and at one point trailed 4-1. The final scoreline did not flatter the home side. Such was the devastation felt by Willie Maley at this humiliation that even decades later he could hardly bring himself to talk of the occasion.