One day in May

After yesterday's thrilling climax to the English football season, and the bizarre experience of watching people in a studio watching something we couldn't see, there was only one thing to talk about today, so apologies for another football related post.

Twenty-nine years ago today, the team I support, Dundee United, won the top league in Scotland for the first, and so far, only time in their history. These four replica shirts reflect my years of supporting them.

The first, on the left, was the one I bought to take with me to Uni. The one that people in college described as a 'Wolves top', at first in ignorance and then to wind me up. I wore it in all my Uni exams for good luck (probably not if you were sitting behind me) and I was wearing it when I went up to Dundee twenty-nine years ago. But more of that later.

Next is the top I got after the championship winning season, complete with badge to mark the occasion - a top I played a lot of five-a-side football in. And some other sports too. At least, until I got the third shirt in the line - a retro style top, one of a bulk order some of the guys organised when I was working in the bank. For some reason it took months to arrive. And finally, a gift from the people in the office for my fortieth birthday, complete with name and number (40) on the back. That's the one I wear most often these days.

But what of that day in May 1983?
This is something I wrote a while back that describes that day.

When the alarm clock went off I was already awake. Five-thirty in the morning. I gathered my stuff together and checked the train timetables one more time. After all, it was ludicrously early to be setting off. There were more than nine hours until kick-off and I was only travelling two hundred miles. And yet. There was no telling just what the queues would be like. Somehow it hadn't been made all-ticket - you could just pay at the turnstiles to get in, like any other game. Except this was the single most important game in the club's history. Any later train from Durham wouldn't get me to Dundee until after one. This was the only way to get there before twelve.

So for the only time during term-time in my three years as a student in Durham, I found myself walking out of Dundee's main railway station later that morning. Connections, loose to the point of boredom, had been safely made in Newcastle and Edinburgh, and there was plenty time to walk through the city centre and up the Hilltown to the ground.

I hoped I wouldn't be spotted, not having told my parents of my plan to come and see the game, convinced they'd think it a waste of time and money to travel all that way just for a game of football. By the time I got up to Dens, people were already milling around in the street. Sort-of queues were forming at the turnstiles, three hours before kick-off. I met a number of old school-mates near the head of the queue and once the gates opened we got into the ground and took our places on the open terracing right behind the goal at the TC Keay end. Soon the whole stretch of the 'away' terracing was packed but we could hear the turnstiles still clicking round and round as more people poured in.

By two o'oclock the ground looked completely full but more fans were arriving all the time. Police and stewards started directing groups of United fans to other parts of the ground, wedges of tangerine amongst the home supporters. Although there were clearly more United supporters in the ground there were still a significant number of Dundee fans there, perhaps hoping to see United fall at the final hurdle, or maybe just to be part of an historic day for football in the city. Perhaps some of them had been there when Dundee had won their last home game of the 1961-62 season while closest rivals Rangers were losing up the road in Aberdeen. A win that took Dundee back to the top of the league with one game to go. An away game against St Johnstone they had won in Perth to confirm their only top flight championship.

At last the game kicked off, more or less on time despite the massive crowd, with United playing towards us in the first half. And what a start! Ralph Milne chipped the keeper from way out in the first few minutes and the place erupted. Even better, moments later we got a penalty. We held our breath as Eamonn Bannon prepared to take it, gasped when the Dundee keeper saved the shot, but he couldn't hold it and we shouted ourselves hoarse when Eamonn got to the rebound first to make it two-nil. We were going to win the league!

Of course, football is never that easy. Dundee certainly seemed intent to spoil our day. They started to play themselves back into the game and away in the distance at the far end of the pitch they pulled a goal back. That's when when started looking round for the guys with transistor radios. In those pre-mobile days that was the only way to keep up with the scores from around the grounds. How were Celtic doing? They'd started the day only a point behind and almost the same goal difference. They were playing Rangers at Ibrox though and even the poor Rangers team of that season surely wouldn't want to let their bitterest rivals win the title at their own ground?

It was OK.
Rangers were winning.

And although Aberdeen, who'd started on the same points as Celtic, were beating Hibs 1-0, they were going to need to score eight goals to catch us on goal difference.
It was fine.

Half-time.
No change.
Still looking good.
Take a breath.

The second half was nervous. The crowd was edgy and it spread to the players, or was it the other way round? We groaned at lapses of control and loose passes. And then the news spread across the terracing. Celtic had turned things around at Ibrox and were winning now. Even worse, they were now winning 4-2, so they'd caught up a goal on us as well.

I don't know which of my mates pointed it out, but somebody did. If Dundee equalised now, we'd be level on points with Celtic, level on goal difference, level on goals scored. All-tied after thirty-six matches.
There'd have to be a play-off.
Which would bound to be at Hampden.

So that was it then.
The Hampden Hoodoo would kick in.
We'd lose the league in a cup final.

We might even slip to third. Aberdeen had just scored their fifth goal. Earlier in the season I'd been at Tannadice when we'd scored seven against Kilmarnock. Maybe Aberdeen would score eight against Hibs?

Fortunately that was as bad as it got. Dundee didn't score again, so nothing that anyone else did mattered. The final whistle blew and United had won the league for the first time ever. Only the third time in my lifetime one of the Old Firm hadn't won the league. Perhaps that's why they didn't have the trophy at the ground to present it to the team. Even although United were the team in pole position, had the football authorities just assumed that the normal order would be restored and Celtic would win to keep the trophy in Glasgow? Or perhaps with three teams all in contention they just decided it couldn't be done. There was no helicopter hovering over Perth waiting to head east or west with the trophy.

So the players picked up scarves and flags that fans had thrown onto the pitch. Davie Dodds had got a huge tangerine and black top hat from somewhere and the team hoisted the manger, Jim McLean, onto their shoulders. We cheered and shouted until they finally disappeared down the tunnel.

I had just enough time to run down to the railway station to catch my train. There were a few other United fans going to Fife, but I was the only one left in the carriage when we got to Edinburgh. Four Rangers fans got on at Haymarket, and seeing my United top and scarf they spoke to me about the day. They were just so relieved that United had stopped Celtic winning the league at Ibrox. The four of them got off at Berwick, chanting 'United, United' as they walked down the platform. I carried on south, back to Durham and eventually into the college bar.
It was like I'd come from another world.

My home town team had won the league for the first time ever, but nobody here seemed to know the slightest thing about it.

Relatively recently, I was at a United game against Hearts here in Edinburgh. Several times the United fans delighted in singing, "We won the league at Dens" to taunt the home support. Not just a celebration of United's greatest achievement but also a pointed reference to Hearts' own final-day decider at Dens Park in 1986. A day when Hearts had gone to play Dundee knowing that even a draw would be enough for them to win the league, only to concede two late goals and lose the title on goal difference to Celtic who had won 5-0 to overturn Hearts' advantage. Two goals scored by Albert Kidd, whose name was chanted in Edinburgh twenty years later by United supporters some of whom hadn't even been born when the events they were singing about took place.

Had Hearts drawn that day they would have been the fourth different team to win the championship in five years, with only one of those wins by a member of the Old Firm of Celtic and Rangers. As it was they lost, and that most open and competitive era in Scottish football was coming to a close. No team from outside the 'ugly sisters' of Scottish football has come as close to winning the league in all the seasons since. Twenty-six years and counting.