By Alistair Aird
Rangers face Dundee at Ibrox on Saturday. The fans will arrive expecting a routine win, but back in the 1980s, a visit from the Dens Park side was one of the most vexing fixtures of the season. The Dark Blues were something of a bogey side for Rangers, knocking them out of the Scottish Cup in season 1983/84 and 1984/85 and winning regularly in the league too. In our new ‘Blast From The Past’ series, Alistair Aird looks back at a rare Rangers league win against Dundee in the early days of 1986.
Rangers’ first home league game of 1986 was against Dundee at Ibrox, and they went into the match looking to arrest another abject run of results in what had long since become a debacle of a season. After defeating Clydebank 1-0 at Kilbowie in September, Jock Wallace’s side won only three of their next 15 league matches. Two of the eight defeats in that run had come against Dundee, a 1-0 defeat at Ibrox on 21 September and a 3-2 loss at Dens Park om 23 November. The latter match featured a hat-trick from a real thorn in our side in that era, John Brown.
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The headline hogger ahead of kick off was the exclusion of Davie Cooper from the matchday squad. He was fit to play and free from suspension, but Wallace clearly felt that his recent form had dipped. That mirrored Rangers’ fortunes too; the Light Blues were without a win since 7 December, drawing two and losing two of their previous four fixtures in the league. Only two goals had been scored in that run, one of them ironically being scored by Cooper at Easter Road.
In contrast, Dundee were unbeaten in their previous six in the Premier Division. Brown had added to his treble against Rangers with goals against Hearts and St Mirren, but the goals had dried up all round after that, with Dundee registering three successive no-score draws in the lead up to their visit to Ibrox.
The snow swirled around ahead of the game, but it was the growing apathy among the Rangers support rather than the weather that accounted for the paltry attendance figure of 13,954. The Light Blues were circling the proverbial drain.
Cooper’s number 11 jersey was handed to Ally McCoist, but the enigmatic Ted McMinn, wearing number seven, would patrol Cooper’s left wing beat. The versatile Ally Dawson partnered Craig Paterson in the centre of the defence and Hugh Burns came in at right back. And the personnel changes looked to have given Rangers a shake too.
They opened the match on the front foot, and almost broke the deadlock inside the opening 10 minutes, Bobby Williamson bringing out the best in Bobby Geddes with a fine header from a McMinn cross. And McCoist, in a rich vein of scoring form, was uncharacteristically errant when given a sight of goal following a lobbed pass from Paterson.
But Rangers’ main marksman was merely setting his sights. After 25 minutes, his stylish finish gave Rangers the lead. It was the first of what William Hunter, writing in the Glasgow Herald, referred to as ‘three goals of stunning variety.’
Rangers held their single-goal advantage at the interval after which the team emerged to what Graham Clark of the Evening Times referred to as ‘snow of blizzard proportions.’ But that didn’t seem to blow Rangers off course. They were in the ascendancy, and after 63 minutes, McCoist grabbed his second of the afternoon, thumping in a free-kick that took a nick off the defensive wall before the ball spun beyond Geddes.
That second goal gave Rangers a cushion and some much-needed confidence. And three goals in the closing 10 minutes sealed a comprehensive win. Williamson, aided and abetted by McCoist, made it 3-0 before the irrepressible McCoist netted a header to complete his hat trick. He scored 27 trebles in a Rangers jersey; this was number four. Robert Fleck – on as a sub for McMinn – sealed the deal with his first goal of the season.
The win left Rangers fifth in the table, seven points behind leaders Hearts but with a game in hand. Maybe all was not lost? Could this be the spark that reignited Rangers’ season?
Alas, it wasn’t. Wins over Clydebank and St Mirren followed, but Rangers would win only two of the 12 league matches after that. Of the other 10 matches, six were lost and four were drawn. One of the six defeats came against Dundee at Dens Park, the 2-1 reverse meaning that the Dens Park’s side only league defeat against Rangers in season 1985/86 was that 5-0 hiding in January.
This weekend’s game may not have that same fear factor that a fixture against Dundee had in the 1980s. But it is still a vital game. With Celtic due to play again in the league before we do thanks to the League Cup Final against Aberdeen, nothing other than a win will do. Our rivals WILL drop points, its down to us to capitalise when they do so.
But to do that we have to take care of business at our end. And that starts against a side that we have long since laid a 1980s bogey to rest.