Big interview: Penalty hero Brian Irvine on Aberdeen’s 1990 cup win over Celtic and coping with double furlough

30 years on from Scottish Cup win, match-winner fears this season’s competition will turn into the Drybrough Cup

Brian Irvine side-foots his penalty past Pat Bonner to clinch victory on 12 May 1990. Picture: SNS

It’s going to be a strange couple of days for Brian Irvine. Tomorrow the former Aberdeen and Scotland defender officially starts furlough leave from his job at Marks & Spencer Foodhall in Inverness, and Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of the day he side-footed home the decisive penalty at Hampden Park the last time the Dons lifted the Scottish Cup. “Surreal” is the word he uses to describe both the past and the present.

With all the free time he’s going to have over the next month or so, Irvine would love to sit down and watch some of his old matches, including that 1990 success when his spot-kick sealed a 9-8 shootout victory against Celtic following a goalless 120 minutes. “I do have 
old videos of the cup final,” the 54-year-old told Scotland on Sunday, “but they don’t work. It’s all DVDs 
or online clips now.” So he’ll probably end up painting instead.

“I’m finding lockdown quite difficult,” he added. “It’s surreal. Up until now I had been working in Marks & Spencer in the stock room but I just found out today that I’ve been put on furlough from Monday until the end of May. I also do care work a couple of days a week, accompanying a man with learning difficulties from Inverness to Edinburgh, but I’ve been put on furlough there too.

“Being put on furlough is a strange feeling. When I was told the news today it almost reminded me of being back in football and being released by clubs. There was a feeling of ‘oh, I’ve been let go’. I know that, unlike football, it’s not a reflection on my work and I know it’s not that M&S don’t want me – but right now it feels that way, like it did when I was released by Aberdeen and then Dundee.”

Irvine, like most of us, will therefore be stuck in lockdown as the country continues to manage the coronavirus pandemic. His two daughters, Hannah and Christina, have both flown the nest and so he’ll be helping his wife, Donna, around the house and getting out for lots of walks. “My wife has been talking about certain rooms needing painted so I’ll probably do that. Help with the painting, DIY jobs and things like that. There’s not much else to do.”

He was painting the town red 30 years ago tomorrow, although it’s important to note that Irvine’s involvement in Aberdeen’s Scottish Cup success that season didn’t just begin and end with the penalty kick. The towering defender, who was just starting to form a regular partnership with Alex McLeish as Willie Miller’s playing career was winding down, also scored in the 4-1 quarter-final win against Hearts at Pittodrie and the 4-0 semi-final victory over Dundee United at Tynecastle.

Only penalty of his 20-year career

Aberdeen trio Theo Snelders (left), Alex McLeish (centre) and Brian Irvine celebrate the Scottish Cup final win over Celtic. Picture: SNS

His Hampden spot-kick, coolly converted immediately after Theo Snelders had dived low to his left to deny Anton Rogan in sudden death, was the only penalty Irvine took in his 20-year career. “I was just in the right place at the right time,” reflects the lifelong Dons supporter.

His enthusiasm for the moment doesn’t appear to have waned much in the past three decades. In fact, with every passing year that Aberdeen fail to reclaim the famous old trophy, Irvine says the achievement by Alex Smith’s side takes on even greater significance.

“I must admit, I do think that way. It’s true. Of course I’d love Aberdeen to win the Scottish Cup again – and one day they will win it – but the longer it goes that they don’t then the more special our win in 1990 becomes. From a personal point of view, it’s quite a significant thing to have been involved in the club’s last Scottish Cup win. It’s nice to have that moment and to still speak about it.

“I had been involved in cup finals before as a substitute because Willie and Alex were playing but this was my first final in the starting XI and it was a pinch-yourself moment. I had watched Aberdeen win the Scottish Cup three times in a row during the Eighties and then to be part of that history was surreal. It was so special.

“I remember standing in front of 20,000 of our fans and thinking ‘this is amazing, I’m actually part of the Aberdeen team’. If an Aberdeen supporter had just run on the pitch at the end and joined in the lap of honour he would have been arrested, and rightly so. But here was me doing it legally because I had taken part in the game, taken part in the penalty shootout and scored the winning goal. I was living the dream of every Aberdeen fan who was on the terraces cheering.”

Scottish Cup could turn into ‘Drybrough Cup’

Aberdeen’s hopes of finally winning the trophy again this season remain intact but with football off the agenda for the foreseeable future, no one knows when or even if the Dons’ semi-final tie against holders Celtic will be played.

Last weekend Scottish FA president Rod Petrie insisted “there’s no pressure on time to play it out” and that the tournament will be completed, even if it means contesting the semi-finals and final in 2021. Irvine thinks that’s a “crazy” suggestion and fears it would turn this edition of the Scottish Cup into the old Drybrough Cup.

“The whole idea of the cup is starting out around December/January time and trying to win it in the summer, not the following winter! It would be mad if Aberdeen started out trying to win the Scottish Cup at the beginning of 2020 and then won it sometime in 2021. There’s a case this year for saying that the whole coronavirus situation is unprecedented so let’s just forget it.

“If Aberdeen won it then obviously the club and the fans would enjoy it but there could be so many squad changes by then and I just feel the competition would become a bit like the Drybrough Cup... You’d have four big teams left in Aberdeen, Celtic, Hibs and Hearts but if it’s played way in the future then it would just be like a mini tournament. I don’t know what the answer is. The people in authority will have to make decisions for the best of Scottish football.”

Aberdeen supporters have been celebrating a few special anniversaries during lockdown. The Scottish Cup wins of 1970 and ’90 and the league title triumphs of 1980 and ’85 are allowing them to fill the current void by watching often grainy clips of past glories. And there’s still more to come.

It’s also 25 years this month since Aberdeen’s famous ‘Great Escape’, when they narrowly avoided what would have been the club’s first ever relegation following a thrilling run of victories at the end of the 1994-95 season, including a two-legged 
play-off success against Dunfermline. Irvine says he takes just as much satisfaction from that dramatic act of escapology as he does from his cup heroics.

Roy Aitken’s Aberdeen were four points adrift at the foot of the table with only three fixtures of the regular campaign remaining but recorded victories against Hearts, Dundee United and Falkirk to finish five points ahead of relegated United. The Dons then defeated First Division Dunfermline 6-2 on aggregate to avoid the drop in Scottish football’s first ever play-off.

Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis

“I actually liken that campaign to the situation we are in just now,” added Irvine. “A few months ago there was a lot of division in politics with the Brexit and independence arguments but the situation we are in now with coronavirus has brought everyone together. It was the same that season for Aberdeen – being in relegation trouble brought all the fans together in such a dramatic, galvanising way.

“Some people are more natural worriers than others. I was a natural worrier so I was certainly concerned about the consequences of losing those games. For me, it would have been unthinkable if Aberdeen had been relegated and I had been part of that. It was a huge relief to survive.”

But, for Irvine, the high of securing the Dons’ top-flight status was wiped out by an awful low just weeks later – it’s also coming up a quarter of a century since the centre-half was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He spent four months on the sidelines battling the condition, before resuming his career with Aberdeen and then moving on to successful spells at Dundee and Ross County.

“I took my health for granted before but that was a life-changing moment,” Irvine recalled. “We escaped relegation and I was given a new contract at Pittodrie but unfortunately I had problems with my legs and then came the diagnosis. It was quite dramatic how I could have such a high and then such a low in that short period of time.

“I know it sounds a bit cliché but what I have learned over the years is that it’s so important to just keep going. Sometimes we don’t always have the answers but we need to keep going. Thankfully things worked out.”

Irvine has a clean bill of health these days and says he still feels young, but he’ll turn 55 at the end of this month – another significant milestone to celebrate – and concedes that his age is perhaps starting to catch up with him.

Joining the police

In 2016 he enrolled as a police officer but reckons he joined the force too late in life and so left after only a couple of years on the beat back in Aberdeen. Irvine thinks that his days of being directly involved in football are probably over, too, after losing his coaching job at Ross County’s youth academy last October as part of cost-cutting measures.

“I was 52 at the time I joined the police,” he said. “I really enjoyed the experience, especially the social work aspect, and I saw a different side of Aberdeen, that’s for sure, but I realised that the job wasn’t for me.

“At Ross County I was last in so first out and unfortunately I’m not involved in football coaching at all now. It looks like it’s over. I’m almost 55 now. I feel young but realistically at this age you’re past that enthusiastic, energetic stage that you need to be a football coach.”

It’s hard to believe that someone who speaks so passionately about Aberdeen and about football in general will ever be “past that enthusiastic stage” and Irvine is at least still involved in the game in some capacity as an ambassador at Pittodrie on matchdays, meeting and greeting hospitality guests in the Richard Donald Stand.

“I was working at the last Aberdeen game back in March when they won 3-1 against Hibs and I was due to be at the Friday-night game against Hearts in April but obviously that got postponed. It’s a great thing to do because so many of the fans remember me and it’s not like I have to introduce myself to the table. It’s nice.”

Irvine is, of course, eager to be back performing that ambassadorial role as soon as possible. It certainly beats painting.

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