(No) Saints At All: How St. Mirren Outwitted Dundee United in the Scottish Cup Final 1987
The 1986-87 Scottish Cup final is regarded as the worst (Scottish) final in living memory (Leckie 2017). Underdogs FC St. Mirren defeated favorites Dundee United, who were also in the UEFA Cup final and totally exhausted after 78 competitive matches so far (Pye 2015).
St. Mirren fielded one 17-year-old and four 18-year-old players for the final, whose job was basically just to keep moving. As a result, United ultimately ran out of steam, which helped St. Mirren win the cup 1-0 in overtime (Ramage 2022).
What stratagem did St. Mirren manager Alex Smith use?
Number 19, “Steal the firewood from under the pot”, as a strategy - this means continuously draining the opponent's strength (Senger 2004: 71-155).
On a tactical level, number 4 (“Await the exhausted enemy at ease” - balance, Senger 1993: 59-66) and number 12 (“Seize the opportunity to lead the sheep away” - serendipity, Senger 1993: 171-184) are also used.
“In the Cup, you don't have to play pretty. You have to win and make sure your name gets engraved on the trophy at the end - that's what generations of St. Mirren fans at home and abroad expect from us”.
In a nutshell, that's exactly what Alex Smith said in the big Daily Record interview about the memorable 1987 final 35 years afterwards (Ramage 2022).
“Meat grinder” fits perfectly to describe what happened in Hampden Park on May 16: the underdogs from St. Mirren effectively used attrition and dragged the game out both in terms of time and across the pitch.
Smith's better junior team were no match for their opponents except in terms of fitness. Dundee were known for their spectacular attacking football, while St. Mirren preferred to defend and counter-attack by playing long passes (Unbekannter Autor 2024).
Nevertheless, United could have scored several times. But luck was on the side of the Saints, who eventually didn't win the game but Dundee lost it (Leckie 2017).
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The Tangerines, who were already exhausted by their many games (abroad), were gradually drained of their strength (“Stealing firewood from under the pot”). The idea behind was that at some point the balance would tip in the direction of St. Mirren (“Await the exhausted enemy at ease”), whereupon it would only take a little luck to somehow score the decisive goal (“Seize the opportunity and kead the sheep away”).
In return, the spectators were treated to boredom at its finest. Dundee dominated the match, while St. Mirren was content with much midfield dithering and occasional counterattacks (Reynolds 1987; Unbekannter Autor 2024).
But none of that mattered to the 'Buddies': Scottish Sun journalist and (forever) St. Mirren fan Bill Leckie described their perspective as follows:
?You’ll forgive us, though — in fact, if your own club has ever had the same rarer-than-rare sniff of glory, you’ll hopefully agree with us — when we say that all we see when we close our eyes is glorious sunshine and glorious football, a mixture of Real Madrid sweeping past Eintracht Frankfurt and Brazil winning the 1970 World Cup.
That’s what it means to win the Cup when you’ve grown up believing that winning things was for other people, luckier people, glory-hunting people" (Leckie 2017).
It was St. Mirren's first triumph in 28 years and 35,000 club fans from all over the world had traveled to Glasgow for the final (Ramage 2017). In St. Mirren itself, the joy of winning the cup is said to have been so great that people got drunk all weekend and were still sober on Monday (Leckie 2017).
Sources:
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