Deans spared Celtic from heavy penalty

IF RANGERS require an omen after the emotional roller-coaster through which they lived at Dens Park on Sunday, then, as ever, history supplies it should the Ibrox players only look hard enough. This spring is the 30th anniversary of a remarkable occasion when arch-rivals Celtic, who hope to profit from Barry Ferguson’s double dose of penalty spot profligacy against Dundee, showed that such wantonness need not prove fatal.

Celtic flourished even after having missed three penalties in one afternoon, snatching a 2-2 draw with a last-gasp equaliser, for this point later proved the margin existing between the title winners and their nearest challengers - Rangers. Indeed, rather than spear Celtic, this outlandish setback against East Fife acted to galvanise a team who responded by posting ten wins and one draw from their remaining 11 games, overturning Rangers’ slender lead in the process. Having stumbled into a bleak pit in Fife, Jock Stein’s players were fitted with the best prescription: do not look back.

That February day at Bayview, with the 12,000 crowd shoe-horned into stand and terracing, there existed the same disbelief as was present at Dens Park with Celtic missing not one, not two but three penalties in a crazy 12-minute spell in the second half. Unlike Ferguson, who missed the first penalty against Dundee and then was fated to repeat the sin later, Bobby Murdoch realised he was in no mental shape to take the second, having booted his initial effort high over the bar. He duly passed the buck to Harry Hood, who saw his effort saved by Ernie McGarr, by now in the midst of a heroic performance that was supplied with new resonance on Sunday afternoon.

When Celtic were awarded yet another spot kick with seven minutes remaining, the Parkhead side would surely not be so careless a third time. McGarr, though, saved once more, this time from a player called Kenny Dalglish, nominated as the third stand-in for regular taker Bobby Lennox. The youngster’s misfortune created not just a Scottish record for penalty kicks missed inside 90 minutes, but also provided a bewildered goalkeeper with a decent tale to tell in his dotage. At 59 McGarr is still too young to rely on such fond memories to bring the light, but he was glad of Sunday’s reminder and an excuse to recall a day which proved that while the Old Firm receive their fair share of penalty awards, they miss them too.

The former Scotland international watched the unfolding drama at Dens Park from the clubhouse at his local golf club in Leven, and yesterday admitted that the scene brought back memories of an afternoon 30 years ago when Celtic, on their way to a seventh consecutive title, became unnerved by a blob of whitewash 12 yards from goal. Indeed, the fright had already set in before the trip to Bayview, on a day when the majority of Scottish fixtures had been cancelled due to the adverse weather. Dalglish and Murdoch had already missed their team’s previous two kicks, against Kilmarnock and Airdrie respectively. Unfortunately for the pair their further squandered efforts, the bookends to Hood’s miss, received maximum publicity.

"I don’t think there were many games on because of snow or rain, and all the attention was trained on Bayview," remembers McGarr. "It was packed to capacity."

The fans were left breathless by a game which not only included three miscued Celtic penalties, but also featured an East Fife effort from the spot. Billy McPhee was the solitary success story, scoring to put the home side ahead after Walter Borthwick had equalised Dixie Deans’ opener for the visitors. Relief for Celtic came courtesy of a Deans header which slipped inside the post with less than two minutes remaining, just as Mikel Arteta’s late strike from the spot resembled something of an exorcism for Rangers after the horrors experienced by Ferguson.

"I thought we were going to win," recalls McGarr. "It was a corner they scored from, Dixie Deans at the near post with Billy McPhee supposed to be marking him. Billy was never the greatest in the air. We were sick because we thought we had done it."

McGarr, though, had been the reason East Fife did not in fact lose, twice denying Celtic from the spot and employing even his foot on one occasion. "I was going the wrong way and I just stuck out a hopeful foot," he says now, modestly. There was, though, a reliance on some method. "You are better being lucky than good," says McGarr. "I was quite lucky with penalties. In those days you always showed them a bigger end to go for, like [Julian] Speroni did at the second Ferguson penalty. You would stand just off the middle, hoping they would put it the way you wanted them to, and shoot into the biggest corner. That was my trick anyway. Most players tried to put it in the big end, and I think Harry Hood fell into the trap."

Even the one which required no intervention from the goalkeeper, Murdoch’s blast over the bar, McGarr claims to have had under control."I had it covered," he says, warming to his theme.

McGarr reckons that, as with Celtic in 1973, the scare might revitalise a Rangers side shuddering towards the season’s close. "I would think it might bring them to their senses," he says. "The jury is out on McLeish as far as I am concerned. Rangers look as though they are running on empty, and I thought Celtic were the ones doing that a few weeks ago."