Alex McLeish can’t believe 20 years have passed since the craziest goal-laden day of his career.
This Thursday will mark two decades since his Rangers side and Martin O’Neill’s Celtic produced a final day shoot-out for the ages. Twenty three miles separates Ibrox from Rugby Park and on that mad May Sunday in 2003, shots ringing out from both stadiums could be heard at either end of the A77. When their guns stopped smoking, 10 goals had been scored by the Old Firm against Dunfermline and Killie – and with Rangers getting six of them, the trophy was delivered to Govan on goal difference.
That 6-1 win over Pars, sealed by Mikel Arteta’s last-gasp penalty, was enough to eclipse Celtic’s 4-0 win in Ayrshire. Looking back on it, McLeish – who was to experience another Helicopter Sunday experience two years later – admits he has never known anything like that sun-splashed afternoon on Edmiston Drive. His team went on to clinch the Treble with a Scottish Cup Final victory over Dundee six days later – but it was the circumstances of the league victory over a Celtic side that had reached the UEFA Cup Final the previous week that will live with McLeish for the rest of his life.
“Listen, I grew up as a Rangers fan as a kid,” the 64-year-old, who had taken over from Dick Advocaat 18 months earlier, said.
“I would never have believed I would be the manager and win three trophies in one season. Fast forward all these years and it doesn’t seem real. But I was privileged to work with some tremendous players. That game against Dunfermline was such a hurly burly 90 minutes before Mikel’s goal at the end sealed it.
“I kept hearing all the people behind me saying ‘Celtic have scored, Celtic have missed a penalty, Celtic have done this, Celtic have done that...’
“We had a plan from the beginning of the week that if we scored a goal we would run in the net, retrieve the ball and take it back to the centre. We knew it could all come down to goal difference. Sometimes you don’t think about that, you just say, ‘Just win.’
“Our message that week was, ‘We’re going to win this but we have to score as many goals as we can.’”
Celtic’s Chris Sutton infamously accused Dunfermline of lying down to Rangers in an interview from Rugby Park in the
immediate aftermath but, two decades on, McLeish continues to have none of the conspiracy theories. “I know big Chris had his say but Celtic missed a penalty and a barrowload of chances,” McLeish added. “Dunfermline didn’t lie down. Not at all.
“We were worthy of that title. We played extremely well that day and had a massive tempo in the team. You watch the match again and you see how quickly we played and the levels of performance. They were top international players in that Treble-winning season.
“From a team that were a little bit down on their luck when I came in as manager we got them absolutely flying. I studied the European and world market over the years as a kid and one of the things I always remember reading was one of the top Italian managers saying that when you have really good players you need to get your strategy right.
“My strategy was pretty basic. Sir Alex Ferguson always said, ‘Play with tempo, pass with tempo, play assertively and get forward as quickly as you can.’ There were the little pearls of wisdom I used when I took over Dick’s team. I knew I had to get them playing faster. That the team went on to win the Treble with me as the manager, with my great coaches by my side, was fairytale stuff.”
His side that day featured a German goalkeeper (Stefan Klos), two Dutch full-backs (Fernando Ricksen and Arthur Numan) and an Australian-Italian central defensive partnership in Craig Moore and Lorenzo Amoruso.
In front of them were Spaniard Arteta, another couple of Dutch internationals in Michael Mols and Ronald de Boer, Argentine superstar Claudio Caniggia and Georgian striker Shota Arveladze. Oh, and one Scottish starter – the man McLeish insists was the most important weapon in his armoury.
He explained: “Barry Ferguson was on a different planet to a lot of players in terms of his box-to-box play. He was a terrific player, one of the best ever. I bought a boy called Mikel Arteta who was a No.6 for Paris Saint-Germain and I thought, ‘Well, there’s no way he’s going to take Barry’s No.6 jersey so we will have to find another position for him.’
“He was the playmaker at PSG, he started everything. But Barry started a lot and finished a lot, he was just a one-off. It’s hard to believe the way things happen.
“Some people say, ‘You’ve been a lucky manager.’ Lucky? I’ve never had a penny to spend at all my clubs and somehow I got quite a lot out of the players and man-managed the great team that Dick left me.”
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