Johnston looking for another bit of Magic
ALLAN “MAGIC” JOHNSTON made a name for himself as a player by scoring a sensational hat-trick at Ibrox.
Twenty-one years later, he hopes his Dunfermline side can grab the headlines against Rangers this week.
The Pars head for Govan on Wednesday after topping their Betfred Cup group, and knocking Hearts out of the tournament last weekend to end Ian Cathro’s Tynecastle reign.
It is a tall order to expect the Championship hopefuls to follow up that 2-2 draw and penalty-kicks win with another shock result.
But, recalling his stunning treble in Hearts’ 3-0 win over Rangers in January 1996, Johnston knows that magic can happen at Ibrox.
Rangers had the likes of Brian Laudrup, Richard Gough, Gordon
Durie and Andy Goram in their ranks that day.
But a 22-year-old Johnston became the first Hearts player to score a hat-trick at Ibrox in 59 years.
The Fifers manager, who went on to have a 12-month spell with Rangers, said: “Ibrox does hold special memories for me from my time as a player.
“That was one of those days where everybody played at their best.
“When you go to places like Ibrox, you need to defend well, first and foremost, because you can’t afford to lose cheap goals.
“But that was one of those days where we played well as a team, we defended well and we broke forward well.
“And obviously I was in the right place at the right time to pick up the three goals. It was nice!”
Johnston has since enjoyed success as a manager at Ibrox.
He steered Queen of the South to a penalty-kicks win over the Light Blues on their way to winning the Challenge Cup in 2013.
And he knows Dunfermline will need to improve upon the display that sealed Cathro’s fate against Hearts if they are to make the quarter-finals of this season’s Betfred Cup.
He added: “It’s going to have to take a really, really good performance to go to Ibrox and get a result.
“But when you go places like that, they’re under pressure to win. And people expect them to win quite comfortably.
“We’ve just got to make sure we approach the game in the same manner we did the Hearts game and hopefully try to get the same outcome.
“To win games like Rangers away, everybody has to be at their best.” History is not on the side of the Pars. It is 45 years since they last won at Ibrox, a 4-3 success back in 1972.
Just a month before Rangers won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup in Barcelona, they went down in a sevengoal thriller, with a certain Jim Leishman scoring the winner for the visitors.
Dunfermline’s other scorers were Mackie, Thomson and a Jardine own goal, with MacDonald (2) and Stein on the mark for the hosts.