Montford memories: BBC were ready to stop me commentating on the greatest club match played

IT'S pretty hard to keep a secret, but I think 40 years is long enough to wait before revealing that Scottish Television, the Scotsport cameras and myself as commentator were close to being prevented from covering the greatest club match ever played in our country – the 1960 European Cup final between Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt.

We had applied to the European Broadcasting Union for a commentator's position in the old Hampden stand, but were referred to the BBC, who were providing the technical facilities for the dozens of commentators who wanted to be present. "Sorry," BBC London told us, "No room. All places taken."

STV's pleas for a reprieve – we just knew this final was going to be special – were somewhat patronisingly dismissed (I exclude BBC Scotland from any mischief-making) but we were told "if you wanted to stick a couple of cameras in front of the North Stand you could by all means cover the match". This had never been done before and I'm not saying our outside broadcast unit was the most spartan in the land, but nobody could see any objections to the plan so we just went ahead and did it... two cameras, one sound engineer, a monitor and me! It's the oldest clich in the world, but the rest as they say is history!

Glasgow – no, all Scotland – anticipated the match with great enthusiasm. When the sale of tickets for the game was announced with just 24 hours notice, a crowd of 30,000 spectators were already in place by eight in the morning. By 4pm the eight members of the SFA running the sale had sold out. Such was Uefa's gratitude for such a diligent "shift" that they donated the sum of 50 to be divided amongst those involved. Ernie Walker, who would go on to become Secretary of the SFA, spent his share on the purchase of a new caddy car! The crowd, officially given as 127,620 (still a record 40 years on) were treated to a feast of football, which, like the attendance has never been surpassed.

In praising the all-conquering Real Madrid with their version of total football, it would be unfair to describe Eintracht Frankfurt as an "ordinary" side, despite losing seven goals. The Germans, the first team from their country to reach the European Cup final, had eliminated a very good Rangers side in the semi final by scoring SIX goals at Ibrox and on their own Eintracht Stadium, conceding four. Real had beaten their guest rivals Barcelona 3-1 home and away. The average goals per game from opening match to the day of the final was an amazing 4.19, another statistic never equalled since.

Real had just been voted "the best team in the world" by an international panel of journalists and commentators and nobody who watched their record 7-3 win that lovely May evening would disagree. The Spaniards had already made history by winning the first European Cup in 1956 by defeating the French Champions Rheims on their own ground. They then beat Fiorentina 2-0 in the Bernabeu the following year, before defeating AC Milan (3-2 in Brussels), and in 1959 they beat their old adversaries Rheims 2-0 in Stuttgart. Alfredo di Stefano scored in each of those four finals. Miguel Munoz was promoted from Real captain to manager during the cup run and left Ferenc Puskas out of the final line up.

The 1960 final was refereed by Jack Mowat of Rutherglen. He was 52 (five years beyond the current SFA retiral mark) and this was his last match. When he submitted his expenses at the invitation of UEFA after the game he sent bus tickets to the value of one shilling and sixpence.

The story of perhaps the greatest football match ever played, certainly at club level, has been well documented of course. Eintracht, in red with white sleeves scored first through Richard Kress then Real simply dazzled the crowd and the opposition by scoring six in a row before Erwin Stein made it 6-2. Then after Alfredo Di Stefano had scored Real's seventh (and his own hat-trick) Stein scored his own second to make the final unforgettable score 7-3. Puskas had scored four, one a penalty in the 56th minute. The huge crowd, realising that they would almost certainly never see anything quite like this again, engulfed both teams with their sustained applause, so much so that Real's players, clutching the European Cup, did two laps of honour.

What a gift to a commentator, especially to witness and describe a match which I nearly didn't get to see at all ... first hat-trick, highest score ... first four-goal striker, biggest attendance ... three players, sharing nine goals. And to think that Scotsport viewers were almost denied the pleasure of sitting back and watching this footballing masterclass. It would have been one of the greatest regrets of my career had we accepted the BBC's initial rejection, and I look back with a sense of pride that we did whatever it took to offer our viewers the best possible coverage of what was a truly unique occasion.