Cammy’s father knew win over Gers was on the cards
Rangers have lost their manager, but they’ll still be odds-on favourites to win their next Premiership match against Livingston.
One of the great thrills in football comes when the underdogs pull off a shock result.
That was very much the case when St Mirren hosted Rangers on November 16, 1968.
The Saints’ start to the season 53 years ago had caused a stir throughout the country.
They were Britain’s only unbeaten league side, and sat just a point behind Celtic at the top.
Despite their sparkling run of results, a Rangers side packed with internationalists was still expected to leave Love Street with a victory.
However, the Saints went marching on by securing a 1-0 victory.
It was a result few people saw coming and, as former Buddies’ defender Cammy Murray recalls, not everyone saw the winning goal.
He said: “The weather was shocking that day. The pitch was like a skating rink, and I remember it being a horrible, foggy afternoon.
“You could hardly see from one end of the pitch to the other. I’m sure a lot of supporters didn’t actually see Hughie Gilshan’s winner hitting the net.
“We had a lot of good players, and Denis Connachan put in a great performance in goal that day.
“Peter Kane, our centre-forward, had a stall down at the Barras in Glasgow. At the time, he was selling anoraks.
“I remember coming into training one day, with some tomatoes from my market garden. I arrived with tomatoes and went home with an anorak.”
St Mirren’s great run came to an end seven days after beating Rangers.
They lost 2-0 against Aberdeen – a team featuring Cammy’s brother, George, in defence.
Cammy went on: “The way I see it, you need the breaks to achieve success, and we didn’t seem to get them at times.
“We were a newly-promoted team in 1968, but we really shouldn’t have been relegated in the first place.
“The number of goals we seemed to lose in the last minute when we went down was incredible.
“Mind you, it can work in your favour sometimes.
“I remember a game against Hibs when Alan Cousin looked a certainty to score from six yards out.
“He rattled it against the bar and the ball broke to Bobby Pinkerton. He switched it to Bobby Adamson, who took the ball and raced up the pitch and set up Jim Blair to score.”
Cammy was a player who seemed immune to injury. He joined St Mirren in 1962 and made 170 consecutive league appearances between August of that year and April 1967.
His third game for Saints was a 2-1 win against Rangers in the League Cup.
Being released by the Paisley club after 10 years’ service was a bitter blow.
He said: “I had a season with Motherwell, but I didn’t get to play in my preferred defensive role. I then joined Arbroath, and spent five happy years there.
“We had some fabulous players. There was Dave Smith, an artist with a football, Jimmy Bone, John Fletcher and Andy Penman.
“I got another victory against Rangers with Arbroath – one that was firmly predicted before the game by my father.
“One of his police pals asked him: “What will the result be today, Geordie?’.
“He said, quite confidently, that Arbroath would win because he’d seen a white horse on the way to the game.
“We got a 3-2 win, and his Rangers-supporting friends told him to stop seeing horses!”
Cammy, now 77, spent 15 years coaching at Motherwell and also had a stint assisting Tom Forsyth at Dunfermline.
He combined football with work as a PE teacher.