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Seasons To Savour
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1983/1984
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Fans will argue about what was the best Forfar team of all time, but it will be hard to dispute the claims of the team of 1983-84 – for no other reason than that they were the first team to make the country sit up and take notice. Hitherto, Forfar had been the butt of jokes about being renamed "Forfar Nil" etc. but throughout the late seventies and early eighties under energetic and positive Management and Directorship, the team had risen, had given Rangers loads of bother on several occasions in Cup competitions, and now they had at last won something – the Second Division of the Scottish League.
1984 was of course the year that George Orwell warned us about. A police state would be in power, and "Big Brother" would be watching us. Fortunately the predictions of that depressing man did not work out and Forfarians have every right to recall 1984 as a great year. Mrs. Thatcher was the Prime Minister, and although far from popular in Scotland, she was nothing like as bad as the Orwellian nightmare. She had already beaten up the Argentinians in the Falklands, and was about to take on the miners in the coalfields. In that she would, sadly, be equally successful.
Doug Houston and Henry Hall were men who knew their football. They had a fine squad of players like Billy Bennett, Ian McPhee, Alec Brash, Ray Farningham, Jim Liddle and Billy "Seagull" Gallacher, and a class act in the goal called Stuart Kennedy, a man now clearly rehabilitated from a disastrous experience at Wembley a few years earlier. A defeat in the League Cup at the hands of St.Mirren was unlucky, but League form was consistently good with the only defeat sustained before New Year being at the old bogey ground of Stenhousemuir. Midwinter brought some seriously good form as Berwick Rangers, Stranraer and Montrose were all put to the sword, and two narrower but more crucial victories registered over Dunfermline and then Arbroath at Gayfield on January 2nd on a day of wind and rain which was bad even by Gayfield’s standards! Dunfermline’s narrow defeat of Forfar in the Scottish Cup in early January was no bad thing, as it turned out bad weather gave the team a chance to recover and regain breath, as we thought, but then as the weather improved, Forfar went down to East Stirlingshire. It would however be the last defeat before promotion was gained and the title won.
The last day of March saw promotion gained at Stenhousemuir, and the following week saw media attention firmly focussed on Forfar as we became the first team in the United Kingdom to win a League title in 1984. 2,160 assembled to see Stranraer who shocked everyone by scoring first. "A some rekker" was the way that the goal was described by my neighbour, but Forfar ran out 5-3 winners with Liddel scoring two outstanding goals. The trophy was presented and Chairman Sam Smith, the architect of it all, told everyone over the loudspeaker to go across to Jarman’s and buy a drink and he would pay for it! One presumes that no-body took up his offer, otherwise he might have been somewhat impoverished at the end of that day!
Forfar finished 16 points clear of second place East Fife that year. A surprising feature that season was that Dunfermline finished 9th in the Second Division. Another surprising thing was that the Double of the Premier League and the Scottish Cup by someone other than the Old Firm. This was Alec Ferguson’s Aberdeen, although even their own supporters would admit that their Scottish Cup Final win over Celtic was a lucky one. In England, Liverpool won the League, Everton the FA Cup (beating Elton John’s Watford in the Final) and then Liverpool won the European Cup in an unsatisfactory penalty shoot-out.
In the summer, France beat Spain 2-0 to win the European Nations Cup as it was then called, and in cricket England were "horsed" 0-5 by the West Indies in a very embarrassing Test series. Locally there was little to cheer about either, for Arbroath United wrested the Strathmore Union from Strathie and Meigle won the Three Counties Cup.
All of this was of little importance however to Forfar Athletic supporters on the sunnt afternoon of April 7th 1984 when Ian McPhee held up the Second Division trophy from the Scottish League President, a man with the appropriate local name of David Letham.
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David Potter
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Forfar Athletic Football Club
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