Much is being made of Celtic's 1-0 defeat by Lincoln Red Imps of Gibraltar in a 1st Leg Champions League qualifier but can it really be deemed the Glasgow giants worst defeat ever?
Scottish domestic football is back this weekend with League Cup ties and it is in that competition Celtic's greatest embarrassment perhaps truly lies. Back in the days of three TV channels and a clan of Scots playing in every major team in the English First Division it was a portly Scottish football scribe that was telling Lunchtime telly viewers what the football world had in store for them at the weekend: "In Scotland, it's League Cup final day at Hampden Park, where Celtic meet Partick Thistle, who have no chance." Those were Sam Leitch's closing words on Grandstand's Football Focus on Saturday, 23 October, 1971.
Not a single voice across the nation was raised in dissent. Who could argue with the BBC's pre-match guru? Managed by the great Jock Stein, Celtic were in the midst of a reign which would bring them nine successive League championships; a team bristling with internationals such as Jimmy Johnstone; Kenny Dalglish; Bobby Murdoch; Tommy Gemmell; Lou Macari and Davie Hay. The previous season they had demolished Don Revie's Leeds United 3-1 on aggregate on their swaggering adventure to the European Cup final against Feyenoord.
Oh, yes, Sam was right, Thistle had no chance. Newly-promoted from the second division and with an average age of under 22, the club had been the butt of every music hall comedian for the best part of a century ("I grew up thinking they were called Partick Thistle Nil" – Billy Connolly), their only claim to fame a Scottish Cup victory in 1921.
And then the tele-printer in the BBC studio began to clickety clack . . Celtic 0, Partick 1 (Alex Rae 9 minutes). . . Celtic 0, Partick 2 (Bobby Lawrie 15). . . Celtic 0 Partick 3 (Denis McQuade 27). . . Celtic 0, Partick 4 (Jimmy Bone 37).
Collective memory puts David Coleman in the Grandstand studio as the half time score was announced: ''that is surely a mistake - we will get that checked for you" said the top master of sporting ceremonies of the day who refused to believe the script he was reading from despite the evidence coming up the wires from Glasgow from ten past three onwards.
The official attendance at kick-off in the 1971 League Cup final had been 62,470 but by the second half the crowd had swelled as many thousands of Rangers' fans – alerted to the extraordinary happenings at Hampden – departed Ibrox by car, taxi, bus and train to witness their bitter rivals' humiliation in what was turning out to be the greatest cup final upset of all time.
Among the stunned faces in the grandstand was 16-year-old Alan Hansen, on the Thistle books as a provisional schoolboy signing, but there in the front row to cheer on his older brother, John, playing at right-back.
Some of the Jags team were full-timers, but goalie Alan Rough had just qualified as an electrician; centre-half Jackie Campbell was a draughtsman; striker Frank Coulston was a PE teacher; and teenage winger Denis McQuade was studying Classics at Glasgow Uni. The year before most of the Jags first team taking to the field as certain League Cup final runners-up had been playing for Thistle reserves against Glasgow Police and Glasgow Corporation Transport.
4-0 at Half Time the final score was 4-1 to Thistle after Kenny Dalglish scored a second half consolation for the stunned hoops but 45 years before the social media lynching that followed the Gibraltar defeat the best ever post war Celtic team were dismantled at the national stadium by the team with the red thistle on their yellow shirts, the Firhill Imps if you like, in the days when people drove Imps rather than called football teams after them.
The teams lining up for the first serious skirmishes of the 2016/17 season in Scotland can only dream of coming close to what the Jags did that day against Celtic and there was no chance of 2nd leg comeback either!