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Date: 20th November 2024
Sub-titled “Seventy-five of the Greatest and Most Significant Games in the history of St Johnstone FC”, this 308 page, A4 sized of softback is a wonderful wallow in the club’s nostalgia.
Having written a comprehensive history of the club (sold out, and subsequently updated) and another volume on the club’s Greatest Players, club historians Alastair Blair and Brian Doyle have not only managed to produce another weighty tome, but have found a new fresh and entertaining angle on which to approach the club’s history.
The book is split into three sections. The first covers thirty Milestones Matches – first game, first Scottish Cup tie, first trophy, first under floodlights, first and last games at new and old grounds etc.
Then there are eighteen “Significant Games”, essentially turning points in the club’s history, starting with the record defeat in any match, an 18-1 hammering at home to Glasgow Thistle on, you’ve guessed it, New Year’s Day 1886, through to a Play-off match against Inverness Caledonian Thistle in May 2022 which preserved the club’s Premiership status.
The third section is thirty of “The Greatest Games”, in ascending order. These also span the centuries, from a 9-4 away victory over their great local rivals Fair City Athletic in November 1895, to the 2021 Scottish Cup final victory over Hibernian. That this game only ranks at Number 8 is indicative of the rich material at the authors’ disposal.
Each of the 75 matches is described with excerpts from as many newspaper match reports as they could find, the recollections of supporters, players, officials, commentators etc, and the context of the match, which combine to provide an entertaining and illuminating read.
What comes through is a great love of the club, on the part of the authors and those they have interviewed, and the entire enterprise provides a template for the historians of other clubs to follow, to the inevitable delight of their supporters.
This reviewer has to disclose a particular interest, as he was General Manager of St Johnstone for four years between 1989 and 1993, during which four of the selected matches fell.
The First Division match at Ayr in April 1990 brought the victory which clinched promotion to a Premier Division turbo-charged by Graeme Souness’s tenure as Rangers manager. What the book doesn’t describe is the celebratory party which took place at Norrie Martin’s hotel in Prestwick after the match. Memories of that include Paul Hegarty’s rendition of Delilah as his contribution to the impromptu “concert”, Steve Maskey’s impersonation of Inspector Clouseau courtesy of the hat “borrowed” from one of the guests at the wedding reception elsewhere in the hotel. Steve took the hat home with him and the club’s offer to reimburse the owner was elegantly rebuffed by Norrie Martin, who did it himself, no doubt reflecting on the “good night at the bar” courtesy of the carousing Saints party.
Four weeks before that was the 3-1 victory over title-chasing Airdrie in front of a full house at McDiarmid Park, a perfect match on a perfect day (if you were not an Airdrie fan) which took pride of place in the Scottish Football League’s Centenary Video – a second tier match singled out as being all that was great about Scottish football.
There are two matches from the following season, a 5-0 thumping of the then-mighty Aberdeen which saw Dons fans opening their wallets and offering the Aberdeen directorate some money to spent on players as they took their early leave from the main stand; and a thrilling 3-2 victory over Celtic on the last Saturday before Christmas 1990, when both of the television stations decided not to bother with a highlights show that evening. The neglected viewers missed a treat.
There were also a couple of games I attended as a neutral, notably a 2-2 draw at Celtic Park on the opening League match Saturday of 1969/70. It was a boiling hot day, and Celtic opened it in style by the Chairman and his wife, and Jock Stein, driving round the track in a limousine to unveil their latest League Championship flag.
It is no understatement to say that Celtic utterly dominated Scottish football at that point midway through their nine-in-a-row League championships. The significance of the game- rated the seventh greatest in the club’s history – is that St Johnstone not only matched them at every turn, but were arguably the better team.
It was the first evidence of what a good side Willie Ormond had built in Perth, a mixture of excellent seasoned professionals and the flair and enterprise of bright forwards in Kenny Aird, Henry Hall, John Connolly and Fred Aitken. Celtic included seven Lisbon Lions, their new signing Harry Hood and from the next generation Lou Macari and George Connelly; but they couldn’t get the better of Saints, in teamwork or ball skills, before 60,000 witnesses – the biggest crowd in British football that afternoon.
The book costs £25, plus carriage, from St Johnstone FC or via Amazon, ISBN 9798863123486.
Review by John Litster. Article first published in the Scottish Football Historian. For more details and to subscribe (four issues a year), please visit: https://www.scotlandsfootballers.com/sfh.html
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