Friday 28th September, 2018 at 9:00am
Scottish First Division
12th January 1974
Dunfermline Athletic 1 Partick Thistle 1
To take a point away from home in a very competitive league was considered at the time to be a reasonable outcome. In actual fact we came within three minutes of claiming both points(2 points for a win in those days).
Ronnie Glavin gave Thistle the lead after 16 minutes. We enjoyed that, blissful of the fact that before very long he would be making his way across to Glasgow’s east end. It was, of course, inevitable that the Jags team which won the League Cup would gradually break up, with Alex Forsyth, Alex Rae and Jimmy Bone having already departed the scene. The nucleus of the team remained, as you will see from the line-up for the chosen match:- Alan Rough, Bobby Houston, Danny Kellachan, Ronnie Glavin, Jackie Campbell, “Nobby” Clark, Johnny Gibson, Joe Craig, Tommy Rae, Benny Rooney, Bobby Lawrie.
Understandably, for mid-January, the weather conditions were far from ideal. Thistle won the toss and chose to take the dubious advantage of a howling gale. I say dubious because opinions vary on this particular issue. The game kicked-off at 2pm because of power restrictions in force at the time. All in all, it wasn’t a bad match for the 4,000 spectators in attendance.
Thistle could have been so much worse. After all, I could have chosen, as a well-known masochist, our match at Dunfermline in 1959, when we lost by the princely score of 10-1, after being 7-0 down at half-time. I don’t know about you, but East End Park is certainly not a favourite away ground of mine.
Robert R
