Old Gunners and Gooners : Bannockburn 1967?

Back to Traditional kit.

Don Howe replaces Dave Sexton.

1967-68.

Since about 1953, when Rangers were the opposition at the inauguration of the new floodlights, Arsenal had played Glasgow Rangers in friendly matches. They started as midweek games and then later changed to Saturdays before the official season started.

They were played alternately at Highbury one year and Ibrox the next.

I’d been to many of these games at Highbury and seen Scottish legends such as Jim Baxter,

Willie Henderson, Ralph Brand & Eric Caldow.

A few years later I would meet a couple of Glaswegian fellas when working in Spain, who have been great mates ever since, and one of them, Tommo, recalls seeing Arsenal at Ibrox a few times as a kid.

Bannockburn 1967

In August 1967 Rangers came to Highbury for their traditional bi- annual visit.

At the end of the game we wouldn’t see them again until Nigel Winterburn’s testimonial in 1997.

Most of the pubs in Highbury were packed with Rangers fans since opening time but some of us managed to squeeze into the Gunners.

Many older Scots were there and we enjoyed friendly conversations with them about football.

One even gave me his Rangers lapel badge, which I still have.

We decided to get in the ground early, about 2pm, and found the North Bank almost totally full of Rangers fans. These were not the usual teenagers that normally came with English clubs, but mainly middle aged men, pissed as newts. They actually had crates of bottled beer with them.

We had to stand at the very back of the North Bank, for those that remember, the other side of the pathway that ran across from Avenell road side to Gillespie road entrance.

There were a few fights before kickoff and fans were being ejected. What made us laugh was that one of the first to be led around the pitch was “Big Hughie” a Scottish Chelsea fan who we recognised.

Sometime during the second half a number of bottles were lobbed in our direction as Arsenal fans around us had been singing. One of these hit Buster W in the mouth and he still has the scar on his lip as a reminder. Bonnie & Eddie H both managed to catch a bottle each and threw them straight back.

Due to the slopping terrace they hit the girders above the Rangers fans and shattered all over them causing many to have cut heads and faces. They were not happy, to say the least.

Within moments we came under a barrage of empty and even full bottles of beer.

We had to scatter to the sides to dodge them as glass shards were landing all around us.

A great big gap opened up and for the first time I saw police with truncheons drawn charge fans on the North Bank as the riot continued.

Apart from the police fighting Rangers fans, some of us were fighting them but mainly on the fringes as we were vastly outnumbered and the Scots were drunken fully grown men.

Thank fuck they’re on our side when we go to war!!!

Eventually, the police managed to gain control and the game resumed, the referee had stopped play because so many people had run on the cinders behind the goal.

Afterwards the Rangers fans smashed up most of the pubs and some shops in Highbury and we had to lick our wounds and beat an honourable, I think?, retreat.