Boyhood Aberdeen fan Andy Watson on the day Alex Ferguson came of age

Title win secured at Easter Road was Fergie’s breakthrough moment

Glory days as Aberdeen celebrate with the Premier Division trophy in 1980. Picture: SNS

As Aberdeen prepared to face Hibs 40 years ago tomorrow, most of the previews were dominated by Alex Ferguson’s poor record at Easter Road. He had not won there to date as a manager – not with St Mirren nor, to that point, Aberdeen.

Ferguson sought to play this down, unsurprisingly. “I’m not interested in what has happened there in the past,” he said. “It’s all in the mind. My record has nothing to do with tomorrow’s game. The players will say what is going to happen.” And they did.

Aberdeen, who had dropped only four points in their previous 13 games, were now in pole position for the Scottish Premier Division title before their penultimate league clash of the season, against beleaguered, already relegated Hibs.

“Young, tough as nails midfielder Andy Watson, given a rest during the midweek trip to Tannadice, will return to the Aberdeen engine room,” wrote Alastair Guthrie the day before the match in the Evening Express.

Guthrie’s report was spot on. Watson stepped back in for Drew Jarvie. Still only 20, Watson was the sole Aberdonian in the team. A huge away support followed Aberdeen to Easter Road.

Steve Archibald’s farewell goal

Momentum was with the visitors. Playing down the slope with the wind at their backs, Aberdeen established a 2-0 lead by half-time. Watson scored the second just two minutes after Steve Archibald’s opener. Three more goals followed in the second half as Aberdeen routed Hibs, for whom goalkeeper Dave Huggins was making his home debut as a replacement for the injured Jim McArthur.

Andy Watson was the only Aberdonian in the Dons team at Easter Road. Picture: SNS

Archibald moved to Spurs that summer in an £800,000 deal – Huggins, meanwhile, made one further appearance before moving to East Fife, for whom he played only once.

Archibald is now in Spain, where he established a home after signing for Barcelona as Diego Maradona’s replacement in 1984. And Watson? Where is he now? Little has been heard from Alex McLeish’s long-time right-hand man since a spell assisting Gordon Strachan, another team-mate that afternoon at Easter Road, for Scotland.

“Right now,” he says, “you are talking to me in beautiful Perthshire, where I am staying with my sister,” he reports.

Watson’s mother passed away last month and so he has returned from Oman, where he has been technical manager at West Brom goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi’s football academy for the last three years. Lockdown started in the middle of April in Oman. He was able to fly back from the Middle East but now finds himself stuck in Scotland.

Joy for Alex McLeish as the title is all but clinched with a 5-0 win over Hibs at Easter Road. Picture: SNS

Celtic beaten twice in a fortnight

Watson, who turned 60 earlier this year, has moved a long way in every respect from an afternoon when Aberdeen were crowned kings of Scotland for the first time since 1955. Even though the triumph was not quite mathematically certain, the headline on the front page of that Saturday night’s edition of the Green Final was: “Champions!” The opening line of Guthrie’s report from Easter Road was: “The Dons have done it!”

Celtic had boasted a seven-point lead at the top when Aberdeen travelled to face them at Parkhead on 5 April, although Ferguson’s side did have a game in hand. Within a month, Celtic were toast. Aberdeen had beaten them twice in just over a fortnight. In between time Celtic also succumbed 5-1 against Dundee at Dens Park – the result that really shifted things in Aberdeen’s favour. Not since Kilmarnock in 1965 had a non-Old Firm side won the league. It was now in Aberdeen’s hands.

“Whether Celtic chucked it away or we clawed it back, who knows?” says Watson. “Back in those days it was only two points a win as opposed to three now. So clawing it back was a whole different ball game.”

For a local loon, who remembers queueing to get an autograph from Joe Harper, who became a team-mate, Easter Road proved especially emotional for Watson. Barely out of his teenage years, he had won the title with his hometown team in the sun while thousands of Aberdeen fans, including many of his own friends, looked on.

Ferguson’s dash across the pitch

On top of a goal, “turned in after a bit of a stramash” he recalls, Watson got an assist, not that this was the term back then. Ian Scanlon scored after Watson had hit a shot against the bar in the second half.

“Obviously we knew it was a massive game, but we did not know it would have the significance that it did and that we’d basically win it that day, providing we did not lose by a considerable margin v Partick Thistle,” recalls Watson. Hibs, with George Best having already left for the States, provided limited resistance to say the least. But then little seemed capable of getting in Aberdeen’s way in any case.

“What I remember is it was a sunny day and a huge following from Aberdeen,” recalls Watson. “In that following there were obviously pals of mine in the away end. At the end of the game my three mates who I played junior football with, albeit they played for different teams, came running on to the pitch when the invasion started. That is particularly memorable.”

While Aberdeen’s emphatic win was sufficient cause for joy, what really signalled party time was Celtic’s 0-0 draw against St Mirren. It meant Aberdeen simply had to avoid a double digit defeat against Thistle in midweek. It was essentially done and dusted.

Ferguson’s dash across the pitch to celebrate with veteran goalkeeper Bobby Clark reflected this feeling. “Can you blame the man for going out of his mind?” noted commentator Archie Macpherson. Aberdeen simply had to avoid losing by ten goals on the Wednesday night against Partick Thistle to secure Ferguson’s first major honour (the match finished 1-1).

Someone for whom detail meant everything was happy to celebrate – and let others do so – even before the formal declaration. Not that Ferguson went as far as to cancel training the following day. “I would love to say I went straight home to bed but I didn’t,” says Watson. “It wasn’t as though when you go to a cup final they maybe still a bottle of champagne in the bus for the way back, should you win it,” says Watson, of the trip back north. “I think the boys bought a few cans of beer for the journey on the way back up – I remember getting dropped off at Union street and having a couple of pints with the lads.”

Forty years on, in the midst of lockdown, it sounds positively wild.