St. Johnston’s emphatic win over champions elect Rangers at the end of March brought back memories of a previous win against the Glasgow club at Ibrox. The date was 21st December 1963 and for some weeks I had planned to attend the match with my friend Roy McGregor. However Saints were having a bad run and I was having some misgivings. Roy, ever the optimist was more positive and said, “So what – lets go – we’ll have a day out in Glasgow!” We were friendly with Bobby Brown, the Saints manager who supplied us with tickets for the stand – section K seats a 134 and a 135 in the front row (I still have the stubs – how sad is that?) Saints had several players down with flu and brought in a 22 year old centre forward who scored all the goals in a 3 – 2 victory – his name – Alex Ferguson. He later revealed in his autobiography that he was due to play in the reserves against Rangers that day at Muirton but not relishing being on the wrong end of a hiding he persuaded a girl to phone the manager, pretending to be his mother to say he was down with the flu. Bobby wasn’t taken in and told him to report to the hotel where the team was to meet in Glasgow. The rest is history. Saints went to complete the double against the Glasgow Giants with a 1 – 0 win at Muirton Park in the last game of the season. The only other team to do so that season was Real Madrid in the European Cup. In the December game the Ibrox hood lights which were mounted in a row along the roofs of the stands as opposed to the usual pylons were not all that great. During the match a plaintive Glasgow voice was heard to remark, “see thae lichts – ma Christmas tree has better lichts than that!” You can’t beat the Glesgae sense of humour – they needed it on that occasion.

A SPORTING MEMORY
by Bob Macdonald