Clubs still have long way to go to match Scottish Cup record

Sunday, 17 January 2010 21:27

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Ex-Falkirk boss Billy Little relives the tale of the Scottish Cup game that just couldn't get played

By Chris Sanderson

The current cold snap has left a lot of football manager’s highly frustrated.

No games, no-where to train because everywhere’s either frozen or a foot deep in snow.

But it’s unlikely any club boss has suffered anywhere near the headaches that Billy Little suffered exactly 32-years-ago, as Falkirk made 27 unsuccessful attempts to play a Scottish Cup second round away to the crack Highland League outfit Inverness Thistle.

Billy can laugh about the whole saga now but it was no laughing matter back in January 1978 as the country was gripped in arctic conditions just like the one’s we are suffering from now.

Little takes up the story: “It’s funny now, every time New Year comes and goes and I always remember the fixture. We had a reasonably bad winter that year and it was worse up North.

"For almost two months we were on stand-by to go up to Inverness at least four times a week and play this Scottish Cup which totally seemed to capture Britain’s attention as a result of the amount of postponements. There was very little doubt the fixture perhaps dominated many people’s lives for a long period.

“We were due to travel up for the first game on the first Saturday after New Year’s Day – so when that was postponed the re-arranged fixture was pencilled in for the following Saturday because of the long distance that the Bairns needed to travel. But when that was called off that was when the mayhem clicked in.

“As the tie had been postponed over two consecutive Saturday’s the SFA instructed that the tie must be played at the first available opportunity which would be midweek with a 1.30 kick-off. It was bad enough having to go up there midweek but an afternoon start was a nightmare especially as Falkirk were a part-time club playing in the second division at the time.

“If the game was postponed on the Monday it would be re-arranged for the next day and then the Wednesday, Thursday and then Saturday and so on.

"Realistically a lot of the time common sense told you there was little chance the game would be played but we still had to prepare. That meant players had to arrange for time off work only to cancel it when the game was off and ask for the following day and so-on.

“More often than not we would usually get word from Inverness to say the game was off usually around 7am in the morning and my house phone was like the hot line for the next hour with everyone calling me to see whether the game was on or off.

“Amazingly out of the twenty seven postponements we only actually had one wasted journey up to Inverness. I think it was something like the fifth or sixth attempt to play the game and we actually took the match Referee Brian McGinlay up on our bus but before we had even got off the coach, he took one look at the pitch and called the game off.”

So on Thursday 22nd of February the game finally got the thumbs up and after almost a two month wait Dundee finally found out their third round opponents.

The Bairns won the tie quite convincingly 4-0 – the game was virtually over as a contest by the half-time interval and after all the wait and the hype – Falkirk’s Scottish Cup run ended three days later on a Sunday afternoon at Dens Park.

But looking back now, Little who later went onto manage both Queen of the South and East Stirling admitted the victory was achieved at a massive cost.

Billy who made his name with Aberdeen in the 1960s added: “We were challenging for the championship at the time the first postponement was. The problem was that once the game was called off on a Thursday it was then arranged for the following Saturday which inevitably meant our scheduled league fixture was postponed as a result.

“The annoying thing would be that the game would be postponed because the weather up in the Highlands was that bad, but Brockville or wherever we were maybe fixtured to be playing in the league would be playable. But it would be too late to re-arrange a league fixture, so by the time the Dundee game was played we something like around ten fixtures behind everyone else and that ultimately cost us promotion, I’m sure of that.

“We couldn’t even train sometimes because we never knew if the game was going to be played the next day. You just couldn’t plan anything. Sometimes I’d be shovelling snow off the Brockville pitch just to try and keep the players ticking over.

“The strange thing is when we actually played the game, we had travelled up to Perth the previous night and an Inverness Thistle official contacted our hotel to say there was no chance the game would go ahead because the weather was so bad up there. But as the Referee had not called the game off we had to travel the rest of the journey and low and behold somehow we managed to get the game played although the conditions were horrendous and somehow we managed to get the game played.

“The frightening thing is that nowadays games are being called off because the road conditions are dangerous or the paths and car parks around the ground are deemed dangerous. If that was the case back then we’d have been lucky to have the game played by mid-March.”