By David Herd
Rangers take on Aberdeen this Sunday in the League Cup Final, looking to finally win the trophy for a record 28th time. Incredibly, the club who hold the record for most wins in the competition haven’t lifted the trophy since 2011, the longest winless streak the Ibrox fans have ever had to endure in the history of the tournament. It is a tournament that is now an established part of the Scottish football season, but for many years there was just the two main national trophies on offer. The first League Cup final was in the first season after the end of the Second World War in 1946/47, when Rangers already had 24 league titles and 10 Scottish Cups in their honours list. That inaugural tournament ended in a Rangers v Aberdeen final, so what better time to look back on that historic season than when those same two clubs are getting ready to again fight out the first domestic final of the season.
During WW2, the regionalised Scottish football season introduced a new cup competition called the Southern League Cup. Bill Struth’s Rangers dominated the tournament, winning it four times, but they lost the last final in 1946 to Aberdeen. The Pittodrie club thought that meant they would get to keep the trophy, but it was then used for the Victory Cup competition that spring, with Rangers beating Hibs at Hampden in the final to take the silverware back to Ibrox, where it is still on display.
But as football finally got back to normal for season 1946/47, the Scottish League decided that they would retain their own cup competition and create a third national trophy to go alongside the league championship and the Scottish Cup. A new three-handled trophy was commissioned and donated to the league by Clyde chairman John McMahon, who at the time was also chairman of the Scottish League. The authorities decided on a group format for the opening round, maximising the number of matches for clubs at a time when the appetite amongst the post-war public to attend football matches was seemingly insatiable, with two-legged quarter-finals before the more traditional one-off semi-finals and final.
The first opponent for Rangers in the new cup competition were St Mirren at Ibrox in the initial group, with the great Iron Curtain defender Sammy Cox scoring the club’s first League Cup goal in an emphatic 4-0 win. The group, which also contained Morton and Queens Park, was won without dropping a point, and when Dundee United were defeated on aggregate in the last eight, the semi-final draw pitted the two best teams in post-war Scottish football together. Rangers against Hibs, the Iron Curtain facing The Famous Five. The sides would between them win the first seven league titles in Scotland after the war, and they would take part in many memorable occasions in front of massive attendances. The League Cup semi-final was one of these, with 125,154 spectators cramming into Hampden, which is still the largest ever crowd to attend any Scottish League Cup match.
Rangers won 3-1, with first half goals from three Hall of Fame legends. Inside forward Torry Gillick opened the scoring, with centre forward Willie Thornton and winger Willie Waddell then sending the massive Rangers support into further ecstasy. The victory was greeted with a massive roar from the Hampden slopes, with the only disappointment to the Ibrox legions being a muscle injury to Waddell that forced him off the pitch and Rangers playing most of the second half with ten players. The other semi-final saw Aberdeen thrash Hearts 6-2, meaning the final would be a repeat of the Southern League Cup final of the previous season.
The Dons had an excellent team who were sitting in third place in the title race and would defeat Hibs in the Scottish Cup final just a fortnight later. They had defeated Rangers at Pittodrie in the league earlier in the season, and fancied their chances of seeing their name engraved first on Scotland’s new major trophy. Around 123,000 tickets were sold for the match, but when the day of the final dawned on Saturday April 5th 1947, the heavens had opened with monsoon-like rain accompanied by strong winds. Many decided the open slopes of Hampden were no place to be standing on such a day, with the official attendance given as 82,584.
The Rangers fans inside the stadium already knew there would be no Willie Waddell on the right wing, the injury picked up against Hibs had seen him ruled out of the final days earlier. They weren’t aware that his usual right wing partner was close to missing the match too. Torry Gillick was the maverick inside right of the side, a player of wonderful vision and technique with an eye for goal. His workrate was perhaps not what many would expect from a Struth player, but his matchwinning talent meant he was an automatic choice for the manager. The previous day, Gillick’s father Lawrence had passed away at the age of just 55, and the Ibrox manager left the decision on his participation at Hampden to the player. Gillick decided to play, stating that he would not want to let his teammates down on such an important occasion.
As the rains poured down, these were the eleven men who took to the Hampden pitch in royal blue, becoming the first Rangers team to play in a League Cup final:
Bobby Brown, George Young, Jock Shaw, Ian McColl, Willie Woodburn, Willie Rae, Eddie Rutherford, Torry Gillick, Billy Williamson, Willie Thornton, Jimmy Duncanson.
With a strong wind blowing straight down the pitch, the toss looked an important one to win, and Jock Shaw called incorrectly. To his amazement, opposite number Frank Dunlop elected to play against the wind in the first half. Perhaps his strategy was to try to contain Rangers for 45 minutes when his team were at their fittest, and then once they had the gale at their backs they could then force their Glasgow opponents back with the match in its most crucial stage. That plan would only work, however, if they could keep Rangers at bay in the opening period. It was a strategy that failed spectacularly.
From the first whistle, Rangers took advantage of the elements and laid siege to the Aberdeen goal. Goalkeeper George Johnstone was a busy man, but he managed to keep the score goalless for 24 minutes. Then came the breakthrough. Thornton sent Duncanson down the left, his back post cross was perfect for the predatory Gillick to escape his marker and head firmly past Johnstone and into the net. The man who had suffered heartbreak just 24 hours earlier, now raised his arms in triumph as the scorer of the first-ever League Cup final goal.
By half-time the final was all but over. Eight minutes after his unforgettable goal, Gillick created goal number two. He got on the end of a Rutherford cross to fire in a fierce shot that Johnstone could only watch fly past him, but it struck the post. The Dons’ goalkeeper’s relief was short-lived, as the rebound fell to centre forward Billy Williamson, and he promptly dispatched it into the Aberdeen net. Then as the first half entered the last five minutes, Williamson tuned provider with an inch-perfect pass to release Jimmy Duncanson with only Johnstone to beat. The outcome was never in doubt, and the Rangers fans hailed their side as the teams left the field at the interval with the 3-0 scoreline an accurate reflection on 45 minutes of dominance.
Aberdeen knew that to have any hope at all they had to score early in the second period. But with the expert defending of Young, Shaw and Woodburn repelling everything that came their way, Rangers never remotely looked in danger of surrendering their commanding lead. It could be said that Iron was found to be very much more resolute than Granite.
Instead of allowing a comeback, Rangers piled further misery on the men in red by scoring a fourth goal just eleven minutes after the restart. A quick break, a Rutherford cross, and there was Duncanson in acres of space to thump the ball home and allow the soaked Aberdeen fans the opportunity to catch an earlier train home. The latter stages were played out with Rangers now happy to soak up what pressure their bedraggled opponents could muster, with the majority of the fans inside Hampden waiting impatiently for their first sight of the shiny new trophy.
Captain Jock Shaw became the first man to raise the League Cup aloft, a convincing victory for his team who would end the season as league champions for the ninth successive year. Seven of these, of course, were in the “unofficial” wartime league set-up, meaning it would be another half century before the club could properly celebrate nine-in-a-row.
The great Rangers team of the post-war years would only life the League Cup once more, when in 1949 they beat Raith Rovers in the final as the first leg of the first-ever Treble in Scottish football. That final would also see Willie Waddell miss out through injury, and it would also see Torry Gillick score the first goal.
It’s now 76 years since that 4-0 win over Aberdeen, and the teams will meet at Hampden this weekend for the seventh time in a League Cup final. Rangers won the first one, and have only ever lost one of the previous six final encounters. We have the past on our side, and we have the better team in the present. Surely December 17th 2023 is the day Rangers finally lift their 28th Scottish League Cup.
