A SUPERMARKET and its car-park now occupy the site where Falkirk’s Brockville Park once stood, but it was here, on Saturday, April 27, 1974, at 4.45pm, that a world football record was equalled.
Celtic won their ninth Scottish league title in a row, and that ninth successive title, as the Glasgow Herald noted in its Monday-morning report, put them on a par with two overseas teams - M.T.K, of Budapest, and C.S.K.A Sofia.
Falkirk were relegated that season but put up a strong fight, and silenced the large Celtic support when Kirkie Lawson gave them the lead after just three minutes, but within 15 minutes Celtic had equalised through Kenny Dalglish. The same player later went close, but his shot was cleared off the line by Falkirk’s John Markie (right).
The game finished 1-1, and it was enough to spark joyous scenes among the Celtic fans. Many of them ran onto the pitch, and onto the goal where Dalglish equalised. The local police “wisely stood aside and let the festivities go on,” wrote the Herald’s Jim Reynolds. “...All that was left to mark the world record was a bend in the middle of the crossbar where several of the more agile of the supporters had perched themselves.”
Both Reynolds and his Herald sports colleague, Ian Archer, raised the prospect of all-powerful Celtic going on to make it 10-in-a-row the following season.
Archer conjectured that the league title could remain Celtic’s property for much longer than that, and he noted that fewer than 50,000 fans had watched Saturday’s football. “Celtic’s familiarity with success,” he pointed out, “has bred contempt among the populace.”
Rangers, however, won the 1974-75 title, putting paid to Celtic’s dream of a tenth successive championship success.
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