The main piece in today's newsletter is the type of thing I used to write for In Bed With Maradona on the regular.
I like to come back to it from time to time because sometimes to attempt topical discussion in football is to feed on the thinnest gruel.
These IBWM-style stories aren't about coming up with original opinions but research and immersion in a moment. Occasionally they're moments I've lived. More often they're not. And that, really, is what interests me about them the most.
Sometimes these pieces are an exercise in bringing together lots of strands of information, combining sources, to document something that hasn't previously been consolidated – online at least – in one place.
That's not the case here. The story of Motherwell's Scottish Cup win in 1991 has been told. There are other articles about it. There's video footage. There are interviews with players and insights that can easily be found from supporters and locals.
But my favourite way to learn about a moment in football history is to write about it and this is one I've planned to learn about in that way for some time.
Motherwell's men of steel
On Sunday 19th May 1991, an open-top bus carrying the winners of the Tennents Scottish Cup skirted the edge of the Ravenscraig steelworks. Stevie Kirk had scored the final winner at Hampden Park the previous day, coming off the Motherwell bench to head in the only goal of extra time, his team’s fourth of a seven-goal epic against Dundee United.
The moment wasn’t lost on the striker from Kirkcaldy. "The bus went round the corner to where the steelworks were," he recalled later. "You have houses there attached to the steelworks. To realise the people there are not going to have a job shortly, I took my hat off to them. They deserve so many plaudits for the support they gave that team."
At the start of 1991 the closure of Ravenscraig escalated from probable to imminent and the effect on the North Lanarkshire town of Motherwell was profound. The steelworks was built in the 1950s and quickly ramped up production to three million tonnes of steel a year. It became known and respected all over the world for the quality of its output, which was produced from start to finish on the site.
Work at the blast furnaces seared Ravenscraig into the very fabric of Motherwell. The steelworks was described as the backbone and the heartbeat of the town.
Although the staff had already dwindled significantly through the 1980s, the news of Ravenscraig’s closure in 1991 and the finality of production’s conclusion in June 1992 threw Motherwell into a spiral familiar in industrial Britain. Unemployment, deprivation and misery hit our towns hard.
Even as recently as the 1990s, local industries were central to the communities around football clubs. Like so many others, industry had birthed Motherwell FC and the two were inseparable throughout the twentieth century.
When we talk about football as the game of the people, what we really mean is that football is the game of industrial and post-industrial Britain.
The town of Motherwell followed a well trodden path. After post-war expansion, tower blocks went up in the 1960s only for systemic governmental vandalism in the decades that followed decimated the manufacturing sectors that populated them.
Ravenscraig was demolished soon after its closure a year after the Well’s cup win, its symbolic posthumous potential quickly snuffed out as a town raged and mourned like many before it had, and many after it would.
Motherwell is in many ways a typical industrial town with a typical industrial town’s history. The same is true of the football club. It has no more claim to uniqueness than any other, yet the timing of the team’s Scottish Cup win lends to its success a distinct and unusual air of magic.
They are irrevocably linked and were before the final was even played. The club lowered ticket prices, cognisant of the importance of football to the town’s working class. The players were inspired by a manager, Tommy McLean, who was eager to use Ravenscraig as motivation throughout a cup run that meant so much to Motherwell’s supporters.
The Steelmen’s only previous Scottish Cup win was in 1952, right in the middle of the period between the end of the Second World War and the opening of what became Ravenscraig. They scored four times past Dundee that day, just as they would against Dundee’s extremely local rivals 39 years later.
Motherwell’s 1991 vintage were steered to the trophy by a man with a plan. McLean, a former Kilmarnock and Rangers player of some standing, was forthright with his players and valued their discipline.
He worked hard to tighten up a team with a reputation for conceding goals but their cup run in 1990/91 – during which McLean was notably less than happy with Motherwell’s performance more than once – showed that scoring a few was just as viable a path to success.
Joining the competition in the Third Round, McLean’s Motherwell started in impressive fashion by overcoming a poor record at Pittodrie in the league to knock out holders Aberdeen. Kirk’s long distance strike after coming off the bench was the only goal of the game.
A 4-2 win at home against second-tier Falkirk followed in the next round to set up a quarter-final against Greenock Morton, also of the division below, at home at Fir Park. McLean was furious after the goalless draw and hardly ecstatic after the replay at Morton.
Tom Boyd scored the goal in a 1-1 draw before Motherwell won 5-4 on penalties. The clinching spot kick was drilled in by Northern Irishman Colin O’Neill, who marked the moment with what might only be described as an acrobatic celebration with a serious dose of generosity.
Boyd, who went on to become a legendary player for Celtic and Scotland, was approaching the end of his time at Motherwell. McLean’s captain left for Chelsea after the cup final despite competing interest from Nottingham Forest and Leeds United, the latter’s approach enraging Motherwell to the point of legal action.
Celtic were plenty familiar with their future skipper. Shortly after dispatching Rangers in the Scottish Cup but losing to a surging Motherwell side in the league, they met the eventual winners at Hampden Park in the semi-final.
Another 0-0 draw necessitated a replay. Celtic led that game 2-1 at half time, during which McLean issued some choice words in the dressing room. The highlight of a rousing second half was O’Neill’s scorching strike to give Motherwell the lead at 3-2. A fourth wasn’t far behind as the Steelmen booked a return visit to the national stadium for the final.
Quite apart from the mood in Motherwell, the circumstances around the final were extraordinary. It was the sixth Scottish Cup final for both clubs. Dundee United had lost all five, every one of them under the same manager.
Jim McLean had been in charge at United for two decades, winning the league in 1983 and reaching the final of the UEFA Cup four years later. Though hindsight reveals a United in between historic teams, they were favourites for the final in 1991. Yet their awful record in Hampden finals hung over them, evident in pre-match interviews with players and manager alike.
Motherwell v Dundee United was the non-Glasgow final the media would have chosen. Jim was Tommy’s older brother. Though he was quick to make it clear he didn’t seek any specific joy from beating Tommy’s team, he said beforehand that, “We’ve got to cut his throat and we’ve got to win the Cup.”
Given his fortunes in finals against them, he was probably just glad not to be playing Celtic. Tommy was happy his team had found some consistency towards the end of the season and revelled in their status as underdogs. The friendly managerial rivalry was sadly blunted when Tommy and Jim lost their father in the week before the match.
More than 57,000 watched on from the stands at Hampden as United’s Hamish French had an early goal disallowed and Freddy van der Hoorn hit the post. The opening goal was headed in for Motherwell by striker Iain Ferguson. He’d played for United in the UEFA Cup final and both losing Scottish Cup finals either side of it.
Early in the second half United’s John Clark poleaxed Motherwell goalkeeper Ally Maxwell under a high ball. With Kirk reluctantly warming up on the sidelines, Maxwell somehow played on with broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and double vision. Dave Bowman’s long-range equaliser was almost inevitable and it ignited a classic half of football.
Motherwell went back in front thanks to a brave and determined header by teenager Phil O’Donnell. While much of the pre-match attention had been on the injury doubt over hotshot United youngster Duncan Ferguson – he was fresh-faced, once – O’Donnell’s cup final goal was his first in senior football.
O’Donnell later won a single Scotland cap before leaving Fir Park for Celtic in 1994. After a short spell in England with Sheffield Wednesday and a decade after leaving, he returned to Motherwell in 2004.
In 2007, O’Donnell went into cardiac arrest during a match against Dundee United and passed away. The main stand at Motherwell now bears his name. Only David Clarkson, O’Donnell’s nephew and team-mate, has worn the number ten shirt since.
The tight-knit 1990/91 squad has lost others too young. The phenomenal Davey Cooper died at 39 four years after winning his fourth Scottish Cup. Jamie Dolan died from a heart attack in 2008, also at 39. Paul McGrillen died tragically the following year at the age of 37.
O’Donnell’s goal at Hampden gave Motherwell a lead that was soon reinforced by a left-footed strike from the edge of the box by Ian Angus, formerly of the Dens Park end of the Dundee rivalry, but United hit back immediately when John O’Neil headed in Bowman’s cross.
Despite mounting pressure it looked as if the Steelmen might hold on. No such luck. In the last minute a young Darren Jackson raced onto a long kick forward from United goalkeeper Alan Main, attacked the ball with gusto and beat the broken Maxwell.
Substitute Kirk headed the winning goal past Main four minutes into extra time. United were vehemently displeased by what they felt had been a foul on Main before the ball dropped to Kirk at the back post; referee David Syme was hit by a flying boot as United’s players remonstrated with him after full time.
True to form, the match had given them one last chance to make it 4-4. Maxwell’s late heroics miraculously ensured that Tommy McLean’s throat remained untouched and Boyd would be the man to lift the trophy at the end of one of Scotland’s greatest cup finals. Pundit Ally McCoist said it was one of the best games he’d seen in years.
Motherwell haven’t won another cup but have remained in the top flight ever since. They finished sixth in 1990/91 and tenth in a newly expanded Scottish Premier Division in 1991/92. They qualified for that year’s UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, of course, but Poland’s GKS Katowice beat them on away goals in the First Round.
The Well have thrice finished second in the Scottish Premier League, under Alex McLeish in 1995 and Stuart McCall in 2013 and 2014. They’ve lost twice in the Scottish League Cup final in the same period.
Ravenscraig, meanwhile, is its own town now. The steelworks land was redeveloped in the 2010s and became a planned community with thousands of homes, schools, retail spaces, parkland and even a titanic leisure centre. The new Ravenscraig was funded, in part, by Tata Steel.
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“Enjoyment of football is being tarnished by the fact that, ultimately, people can’t tolerate losing any more.”
It’s a little old now, but this comment by Ian King is evergreen. And it is, to my mind, both the symptom and the cause of almost all of football’s cultural ills.
Salty beef extracts
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‘Big dog behaviour’: Inside Gary O’Neil’s Wolves start and the moment that changed everything (i)
‘The atmosphere means everything’: the growth of women’s football fan culture (The Guardian)
Paper planes, cup dreams (Terrace Edition)
Monday night appointment with Doctor Tottenham made even worse by VAR (Unexpected Delirium)
Taras Stepanenko: "Footballers must do their part to help Ukraine" (FIFPRO)
Dessert
The DFB has its own adidas Gazelle now. Sehr gut!
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