OF all the gifts Murdo MacLeod possessed as a football player, perhaps somehow predicting the conclusion to the 1985/86 Scottish Premier League was the greatest one of all. Three decades later it still seems remarkable both that it happened and that someone involved in it could have envisaged several months in advance just what would transpire.
Celtic’s former players and staff will congregate at a dinner tonight to mark the 30th anniversary of one of their more remarkable titles. It remains also one of their least expected. Hearts, looking to win a first championship since 1960, went into the final game of the season needing only to avoid defeat to Dundee to get over the line. They had started the season poorly but from September 28 onwards had not lost in a run of 27 games. They had been top of the table since Christmas and also reached the Scottish Cup final. It was all in their hands.
Celtic had also performed consistently in the second half of the season but come the final game on May 3 they needed snookers. Hearts had to lose at Dens Park and Celtic had to beat St Mirren at Love Street, while also scoring enough to erase Hearts’ four-goal superior goal difference. As no Hearts or Celtic fan needs reminding, it call came to pass. Celtic were four up by half time against a St Mirren team with nothing to play for and went on to win 5-0.
They needed help from Dundee and it came late on in the unlikely shape of Albert Kidd, a journeyman striker who scored not once but twice in the final seven minutes to leave Hearts broken and disconsolate. It seems the unlikeliest of stories but MacLeod, in his penultimate season as a Celtic player, had foreseen how it would all unfold.
“I think Hearts were at the top of the table at the turn of the year and we had a lot of games to catch up on,” he said. “I remember I was on Radio Clyde one night around February or March and I was asked about Celtic’s chances of winning the title. I said it would go all the way and we would win it on the last day. And that’s the way it panned out.”
It is a day that, unsurprisingly, still burns bright in the MacLeod memory banks. The Celtic players tried manfully to focus on their own match but it was only natural as they went about the job of dismantling St Mirren that they also tried to catch snippets of news from supporters or the Celtic dug-out relating to events at Dens Park. Needless to say, in the pre-internet era, the capacity for misinformation was huge.
“Love Street was really busy that day but maybe not jam-packed,” MacLeod recalled. “We had to score four goals and Hearts had to lose so all we could was our job. We battered St Mirren in the first half and then as we were coming off at half time someone shouted to us that it was 1-0 to Dundee. So we were delighted to hear that and then we got into the dressing room and found out it was actually still 0-0. So that was a bit deflating initially
“And then in the second half we’re 5-0 up and there’s a cheer and then it goes quiet again. Seemingly the crowd had heard Kidd had scored and they first thought it was Albert Kidd and then they thought it was Walter Kidd [the Hearts player]! So there was a lot of confusion. And then the whole place went bananas when we heard it was actually 2-0 to Dundee but you didn’t know for sure of that was the case. When the full-time whistle went you weren’t celebrating as you wanted confirmation the other game was finished first. And then the news came and it was an amazing feeling that we had actually done.”
Some Hearts fans, to this day, suspect St Mirren didn’t try a leg in the game but MacLeod refuted any notion that it was a walkover. “St Mirren actually could have scored a couple of goals early on as they started very brightly,” he added. “But the goals we scored were of a really high quality. You see the footage now and there were some really well-worked ones. We had to play well that day. We couldn’t bottle it and let St Mirren in. But every Celtic player was up for it that day.”
That Kidd turned out to be Celtic fan only added to the story, perhaps making it not all that surprising that he was invited to tonight’s celebratory dinner. “It’s unusual for Albert Kidd to be invited, although he’s a Celtic fan,” added MacLeod. “But his contribution meant so much to us as it was out of our hands. We needed a Dundee player to intervene to give us a chance at the title and he was the guy to do it.”
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