The Archive

Ian Campbell reviews the season in which Rangers broke Celtic hearts

The long-term significance
Rangers ended Celtic’s run of nine successive league titles, which had equalled a European record set a decade earlier by the Bulgarian army club CDNA (later CSKA) Sofia. Rangers went on to match this themselves between 1989 and 1997; Skonto Riga of Latvia are the current holders of the record, with 14 championships in a row up to 2005. This was the final season of an 18-team top level in Scotland. Concern about the gap in playing standards between the leading few clubs and the rest led to the creation of the Scottish Premier Division in 1975‑76, with ten teams playing each other four times a season. In 1998 this became the Scottish Premier League, whose current format involves 12 clubs playing a total of 38 matches.

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Cameron Carter reviews a documentary on the life and tragic death of Britain's first black outfield player and army officer

We sometimes forget how hard our modern-day players have it – up to two games a week, fans throwing coins at them, contractually obliged to visit an infant classroom to encourage a healthy diet – and yet even this suffering pales in comparison with what one player went through in the early part of the last century. Walter Tull: Forgotten Hero and Walter’s Story (BBC4) were, respectively, a documentary and dramatisation of the life of an almost inconceivably strong-willed man who was the first black outfield player in the Football League and then the first black officer in the British army.

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Dear WSC
The mention of the “ironic greeting” at Albion Rovers’ Cliftonhill Stadium – “Welcome to the San Siro” – reminded me of the time I popped in to see Wee Rovers, the club that supplied the Boro with Bernie Slaven, one freezing December day. We arrived at quarter to three and took our places in the only stand just in front of the PA man, who was greeting individual arrivals by name. “Hello Mr MacPherson, nice to see ye. How’s the family?” Later, as he spotted a group of Dumbarton supporters: “Hello there! You’ll find we’re a very friendly crowd here. If you could just turn to the left and shake hands with the person next to ye.” How very different from the life of our own dear Premier League.
Bob Kerr, Middlesbrough

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We take playing international football in England for granted but as Steve Menary explains it can be a long fight to be gifted that right

When West Ham signed Valon Behrami from Lazio this summer, he became the club’s first ever Swiss international. His status may change on December 19, when FIFA meet for a second time to consider a membership application from Kosovo, where Behrami was born in 1985.

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Goal celebebrations in Brazil are becoming ever more choreographed and controversial, writes Robert Shaw

One of the best-known and most imitated goal celebrations is ­Bebeto’s baby-rocking tribute to newly born son Matheus during the 1994 World Cup game with Holland. This season a different ­Bebeto’s post-goal antics were received with less popular acclaim in Brazil.

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