Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Unique occasion at Dens 40 years ago
WithBrown
IN football terms, it could be the most unique of rare situations.
A national cup final contested by two teams from the same city.
The match played at one of the finalists’ stadiums.
And the referee was a local official who lived under one mile away from the venue.
This very scenario was played out 40 years ago in Scotland on December 6, 1980, as Jim McLean’s Dundee United and Dundee, managed by Donald Mackay, contested the Scottish League Cup Final, known in that relatively-new sponsorship era as the Bell’s Cup Final.
The match referee at Dens Park, Bob Valentine, remembers it well.
“It was quite an occasion,“he said.
“It was announced three weeks beforehand that I would referee the game.” Bob laughed: “It turned out to be the worst three weeks of my life!
“Everyone, in my office and in the street, had an opinion and/or an affiliation to one of the teams, and were keen to tell me.
“I remember seeing big queues outside Dens and Tannadice for tickets.”
For the actual match, Bob (below) revealed: “It was quite a simple match to referee with little or no controversy.
“I think it’s now widely accepted that United were the better team on the day.
“My home is actually just 800 yards from the ground, and I walked there and back.
“So there was very little expense incurred there.”
Dundee’s Bobby Glennie and Paul Hegarty (United) were the respective captains, with the Tangerines emerging 3-0 winners with goals from Paul Sturrock (2) and Davie Dodds in front of over 24,000.
The teams lined up that day . . .
United – McAlpine; Holt, Kopel; Philip, Hegarty, Narey; Bannon, Payne, Pettigrew, Sturrock, Dodds.
Dundee – B Geddes; Barr, Schaedler;
Fraser, Glennie, McGeachie; Mackie, Stephen, Sinclair, Williamson, A Geddes.
CLAUDIO Caniggia has locally been very much in the news in recent times.
That’s mainly because of the wonderful exclusive featurelength documentary put together by Graeme Strachan and his colleagues at The Courier.
This alerted Bob Donaldson as he remembers the Argentine as “not just a great player, but a great, great guy, too”.
Bob gave some background to his compliments, and revealed: “I’ve been a member of Downfield Golf Club in Dundee for many years and, around the time of Claudio Caniggia’s time at Dens, as a senior member, I was also involved in helping the junior members.
“This mainly involved fund-raising, with the top event being a yearly race night, which was always