The only team in the Bible are due some divine intervention

ON APRIL Fool's Day, 58 years ago, a crowd of 53,000 watched Queen of the South turning up as lambs to the slaughter at the hands of Rangers at Hampden in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup. Two of those fans were me and my mum.

We had recently arrived from our native Dumfries to live in Glasgow. My dad, who came from Langholm, was absent that day, probably off watching Langholm playing rugby. Being a Borderer he referred to rugby as football. When he meant football he called it soccer or "association football".

For him soccer wasn't really a game for men. He also worried, I suspect, that a little Dumfries boy like me, at the impressionable age of eight, might be lured towards the cultural darkness of Glasgow's Old Firm. So they agreed that if I was to follow football it would be as a Queens supporter. Queens fans have a saying that "yer hame team's yer ain team" and it was probably on that basis that my mother took me along to the only Scottish Cup semi-final that Queens have played – until today.

It was great fun, until the closing stages. I had never seen a crowd that size and neither had Queens. I still have some memories of that day – Queens scoring first through Jackie Brown, and our local internationalist hero, 'Bustling' Billy Houliston, whose catchphrase was "rummel them up", knocking lumps out the Rangers players. To some amazement the lambs refused to follow the script in a hard game as Rangers faced defeat.

Houliston went down clutching his stomach, causing my mother to express some alarm. One of the Rangers fans surrounding us on the terracing showed a moment of touching simpatico and shouted at the ref: "Stoap the gemme for f**** sake, Houliston's got a sair belly." My mother explained that Glaswegians were the salt of the earth.

I didn't know it then but Queens are the only team mentioned in the Bible (you can check: Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31). So it was logical to assume God would have been on our side. But, regrettably, He was being even-handed that day and did not fancy allowing the meek to inherit the cup. In the nick of time Rangers equalised. According to the club's official history our keeper Roy Henderson "gathered the ball, but probably because of the swirling wind it went out of his arms and over his shoulder for a goal". A touch of divine intervention the wrong way, I suppose.

Rangers fielded seven internationalists that day including Willie Waddell and George Young in a team just a few games away from the old Division A championship; Queens were heading for relegation. But a Glasgow newspaper recorded that "there was no difference in class".

Queen of the South were only 31 years old in 1950, not so much older than most of its players, and the club has enjoyed a rollercoaster history. In our time we've beaten the Old Firm occasionally but we've had more downs than ups.

I remember mainly the good times. As a cub reporter on the Dumfries Standard I watched our leading all-time goal-scorer, Jim Patterson, net six against (I think) Cowdenbeath. When he went home that night the famously modest Jim didn't even mention it to his wife. The first she knew was when a reporter phoned asking for an interview.

I saw Queens knock Kilmarnock out of the Scottish Cup in an epic replay after the seven-week freeze in the awful winter of 1963, earning our scorer, John Frye, the neat tag King of the South.

I fondly remember the late George Farm, our famously thrawn player-manager and goalie who made his name in the Stanley Matthews FA Cup final. When Queens fired him he phoned me and said the Daily Express had offered him 25 guineas to tell all. But he didn't like the Express and he gave his story free to me. I sold it to the Daily Mail for the equivalent of a week's wages.

But the great Queens goalkeeping character was Roy Henderson, fondly remembered by Queens fans as the best keeper never capped for Scotland. The story was that he once told a potato merchant who offered him advice to "stick to planting tatties and I'll stick to keeping goal". Trouble was the tattie merchant was also the boss of the SFA.

Queens can surprise you. We sold our striker, Neil Martin, later an internationalist, to Hibs and he thanked us by returning within days to Palmerston and putting his new team two-up by half-time. We especially enjoyed beating them 3-2 that day.

Here's the good bit for any Aberdeen supporters: beware history. Queens played Aberdeen in the quarters in 1950. We must have been in benevolent mood that day because we allowed Aberdeen to go 3-0 up in 15 minutes but we came back to earn a draw and a replay. We won the second game 2-1 and my mum and I were on our way to Hampden.

I sometimes envied Aberdeen supporters like Harry Reid, my editor, and Jack Webster, with whom I shared an office for years. When their team was performing heroics at home and in Europe they were ecstatic and they could bore on about Aberdeen endlessly. They'll forgive me for hoping this time that Aberdeen get humped.

Queens' great day all those years ago was followed by a thumping from Rangers in the replay when the crowd was 59,000, according to the papers. On that day Queens evidently suffered the greatest penalty injustice in their history. "Mysterious Penalty Kick Settles Semi-Final" said one of the papers and the reporter suggested the decision to give Rangers a spot kick "will for ever be criticised by Dumfries folk."

Correct. Anyway, Rangers won 3-0.

So a wee bit of that divine intervention for the only team in the Bible is long overdue.