Friday 17th January, 2020 at 8:00am
Scottish Premier League
9th January 1980
Partick Thistle 1 Celtic 1
It gives me immense pleasure when I think back to this particular match. I can see in my mind’s eye a football, a red and white polka-dot style football, if you please, nestling in the corner of the net at the south end of Firhill. It had been dispatched there by Jim Melrose, and two vital aspects of this were the fact that this was a well-merited equaliser, and secondly 89 and a half minutes had already been played. I was ecstatic. All we needed was to play out the remaining 30 seconds, plus whatever time would be added on. That’s always one of the great imponderables, of course. Anyway, the match finished 1-1, and Jags fans could look forward to the remainder of the weekend.
This was the Thistle team:- Alan Rough, David McKinnon, Brian Whittaker, Jackie Campbell, Colin McAdam, Andy Anderson, Jamie Doyle, Ian Jardine, Alex O’Hara, Jim Melrose, Donald Park.
In a keenly-contested match, Murdo McLeod, who would later on become part of the Thistle set-up as manager, had given Celtic the lead after 75 minutes and we all groaned “Here we go again!” However, Thistle held their nerve and were eventually rewarded with an equaliser.
Interestingly, the Thistle substitutes (only two allowed in those days) were Ian Gibson and Paul Wilson, who had a Celtic connection.
At the time of the featured match the Jags were not out of place in the top echelons of the Scottish Premier League, but soon afterwards things went rapidly downhill and we were relegated in 1982. There followed the very barren period which came to be known as the ‘wilderness years’, lasting until the end of the decade.
In manager Bertie Auld’s ‘Talkback’ page within the programme he reflects as follows:
“On a personal note I would like to break new ground because since taking over six years ago we haven’t beaten Celtic.”
That’s nothing to today’s situation! Here we are in 2020 and we haven’t beaten Celtic since 1995! – A mere 25 years if my arithmetic is correct, but then that’s the way of Scottish football sometimes, isn’t it?
The chosen match was played in 1980, which was long-serving Jackie Campbell’s Testimonial Year, which featured a number of interesting events. His career statistics show a remarkable 579 appearances, during which he scored one goal (versus St. Johnstone at Muirton Park in 1975, 16th August to be precise, in a 4-2 triumph for the Jags. I often kid him on about his dismal record in front of goal!
Going back to the reference about the red and white ball, when I was very young my grandfather, who lived on Northpark Street which leads you from Firhill on to Queen’s Cross, said that if I was as good at other things as I was at remembering football trivia then I would go places. Well, in later life, I have gone places – Arbroath, Forfar, Brechin, Montrose, Dingwall, to name just a few.
Robert R.
