“CLIMAX of Glorious Season for Ibrox Club”, ran a subsidiary headline in the Glasgow Herald of the morning of Thursday, May 16, 1963. There are many Rangers fans who will be longing to see such words again, taking encouragement from Friday's appointment of Steven Gerrard as the new team manager.
On this occasion, Rangers defeated their old rivals, Celtic, to win the Scottish Cup in a replay, in front of an estimated 120,000 fans at Hampden (above). It was the 17th time they had won the trophy, the Herald’s Cyril Horne wrote: “This has been a glorious season for Rangers, who easily won the Scottish League championship. Their Scottish Cup record in modern times is remarkable. Since 1930 they have been in 12 finals and won them all.”
Celtic had themselves won the cup 17 times but on this particular replay, they were, added Horne, “shockingly poor”, to the point where many thousands of their fans gave up and left, 25 minutes before the end, after Ralph Brand scored Rangers’ third and final goal; he had given Rangers an early lead, before Davie Wilson added a second goal. The Evening Times’s Gair Henderson said Jim Baxter “and the ageing Ian McMillan” had been Rangers’ “master planners”
“The only disappointment for Rangers’ supporters,” said Cyril Horne, “was that there was no demonstration of success by the victorious team. Once the cup had been presented all the players disappeared in accordance with agreed procedure.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here