The day after the schools cup final of May 1979 the headline in a special edition of the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser reported a night of joy for Chapelhall.
For Brian Irvine it was anything but. Slumped on the Broomfield turf his 14th birthday had gone from a celebration to a wake. His winter of discontent was off to an early start.
Six goals, extra-time and a 3-3 draw climaxed in a sudden death shoot out. Four players from the beaten Victoria school team missed from 12 yards and he was one of them. Quietly, he resolved to avoid taking any more penalties.
The choice was taken out of his hands in the final act of the 1990 Scottish Cup Final. The first to end in a shoot-out after an edgy scoreless draw over 120 minutes the central defender became the most reluctant sudden death hero of all time when he smashed the 20th spot kick past Celtic’s Pat Bonner to win the cup for Aberdeen.
“Hampden was my one and only penalty as a professional,’ he tells Herald Sport now. “I was last in the team lines to take it and the reason I didn’t want to take one was that I usually always missed them as a boy.
“I was never confident with spot kicks. And that went back to that school’s cup final we played in Airdrie eleven years earlier.
“After a draw, it went to penalties. I missed my penalty in the shoot-out and we lost the cup final.
“That kind of experience sticks in your mind and when they were looking for players to take a penalty at Hampden that’s why I got myself so far down the list. It was right in my mind that I didn’t want to take one.
“Ultimately, I never wanted to be the hero or hit the winning penalty, I just wanted the team to win and my confidence in that situation wasn’t high.”
Irvine remains the last man to score a winning goal for Aberdeen in a Scottish Cup Final and he hopes to celebrate his 60th birthday by watching his boyhood team lift the old trophy again for the first time in 35 years.
A matchday ambassador at Pittodrie his presence at Hampden will hinge on family plans to mark his birthday. Now living in Inverness, he already travels to the central belt twice a week, every Monday and Friday, to provide a safe passage for a friend with special needs. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he was still an Aberdeen player the long train journeys offer a constant reminder that everyone has their problems.
“I escort a man with learning difficulties from his parents’ house in Inverness down to his care home in Musselburgh. I then go back and take him home at the weekend.
“When I speak about winning the Scottish Cup with Aberdeen I have to go into a different mode because it feels like a different world entirely. What I do now is million miles from the way life used to be as a footballer.”
The three days in the middle of the week are spent working for Marks and Spencer and, in the aftermath of the recent cyber attack, there must have been times when the task of keeping the shelves full has felt like a challenge more daunting than slotting home a cup final penalty before 60,000 fans at Hampden.
“Charlie was the last of the regular penalty takers and after it was big Alex, Stewart McKimmie, Davie Robertson and a young boy by the name of Graham Watson after that.
“By the time I went forward there was almost nobody left and the switch had been flipped by a great save from Celtic’s Anton Rogan by Theo.
“If I scored I won the cup. And if I missed the pressure went to the next guy – who was Theo Snelders.”
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Aberdeen manager Alex Smith would compare the first cup final shoot out to ‘shooting wee ducks at a fairground’. As Irvine walked from the Hampden centre circle to the penalty spot he tried to banish thoughts of the day in 1979 when he’d struggled to hit a barn door with a beach ball from 12 yards and, come Thursday night, he’ll be back in Aberdeen’s Music Hall with old teammates McLeish, Nicholas, Gilhaus and Snelders to take a walk down memory lane.
“I’ve kept in touch with big Alex and seen him a few times over the years,’ he admits.
“I saw Charlie at the Hall of Fame awards in January, but that was the first time since I played against him when he went back to Celtic after that final.
“Hans Gilhaus, I haven’t seen since he left Aberdeen. I’ve seen Theo a few times, he’s over quite a lot, but once you see each other again you fall into an old groove as if you’d only seen each other yesterday.
“It’s 35 years now but we’ll share some good stories and memories and the years will melt away.
Despite moving from Inverurie to Lanarkshire for his father’s job as a policeman, Irvine was always a Dons man and played through a golden era when open top bus parades down Union Street were as common in Aberdeen as Rowies and the northern lights.
“I feel privileged to have played in a more competitive era. I arrived at Pittodrie from Falkirk and my first team photo in pre-season had the championship trophy in the picture.”
There was another trophy in 1995, when Roy Aitken’s team beat Dundee to lift the League Cup.
Referred to Aberdeen’s Foresterhill hospital to check out the tingling in his feet weeks after a relegation play off escape act against Dunfermline Irvine was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and missed the final by a week. In his autobiography he wrote of despair and going AWOL, his wife Donna worrying herself sick. These days he adopts a quietly effective coping strategy.
“Most of the time I try not to think about it,’ he admits. “I try to block it out.
“I’m fortunate and thankful that for me it’s mainly feelings and sensations in my legs and hands rather than the other end of the spectrum with parts of my body not working.
“When I was diagnosed it felt like the worst thing that could happen to me.
“I came back from illness to play and the disappointment is that I just missed the League Cup Final of 1995 when we beat Dundee.
“I was in the squad, but didn’t make the starting eleven. I came back to play in the game the week after.
“The fact I was a professional so long probably helped me with the illness because I still like to keep walking, I still like to keep active. That’s better for me than sitting in my chair thinking about it all the time.”
A devout christian since he underwent an epiphany while driving to training at Falkirk, the club where he spent two years before moving north to Aberdeen. An Alex Ferguson dressing room must have been an eye opener for a man committed to biblical teachings, yet faith offered comfort and reassurance when the illness struck.
“I had been brought up going to church as a youngster, but it was nothing serious.
“That was a period of time where it all became real and it helped me through the uncertainty of the illness.
“That’s not to say that you don’t have doubts or questions. But that’s part of the faith journey.
“Day by day I would take it one thing at a time. That’s the same for life, you sometimes get overwhelmed by issues or problems going on. You get caught up in seeing the whole picture when all you can really do to get through is take it a day at a time.”
‘1990: The Legends Return’, Thursday May 22, The Music Hall, Aberdeen. Tickets available from www.aberdeenperformingarts.com
