While Celtic were beating Kilmarnock 6-2 on the opening day of the term, Rangers lost 2-1 at Ayr United and although their first six games featured two wins and a draw at home, the three away games had been lost with Celtic and Kilmarnock joining Ayr United as victors.

As you may imagine, the Celtic victory was the most telling of these with the Hoops’ ‘home’ game being played at Hampden where goals from Kenny Dalglish in the second minute, Jimmy Johnstone in the 17^th and Lou Macari in the 49^th had the Celts coasting.

When John Greig pulled one back for the Ibrox side in the 90^th minute, the cheers came from the Celtic End and not the emptied and silent Mount Florida end of the stadium.

That result put Rangers 13^th in the table and they would remain there for four weeks until a 2-0 win at Motherwell nudged them up.

Over the next nine games, six wins, two draws and a defeat took them up until the Christmas schedule and that began with the aforementioned 4-0 win at East Fife – a game that kick-started a 16-game winning run, a tally that could have been 18 had it not been for a draw a Aberdeen on the second-last day of the term.

Four games into that run, they beat Celtic 2-1 at Ibrox, a win that allowed them to leapfrog Celtic into second place while Hibernian sat at the top – the following week, Hibs lost 1-0 to Dundee United while Rangers beat Falkirk 4-2 at Brockville.

The Ibrox side moved top and it was a position they would hold until, apart from a brief blip in March, the second-last game of the season.

However, while Rangers were clinching top spot in those January exchanges, it has to be said that nothing much had gone wrong with Celtic’s season so far. There had been a loss at Dens Park, a draw with Airdrie and that aforementioned 1-1 tie with Hibs.

Indeed, that game on December 23 had been Celtic’s last before the derby meeting on January 6 and it did give a somewhat lopsided view of the Ibrox side’s tilt to the top for on the week they moved there, they had played 21 games to Celtic’s 18.

Rangers had 31 points from those 21 games while Hibs on 20 games and Celtic on those 18 matches both had 30 points.

While Rangers were busy on that winning run, Celtic had lost to Airdrie at Broomfield and drawn with Partick Thistle, East Fife and Dundee United but by the time they came to play Motherwell on Tuesday, April 3, they were in line to have played the same amount of games as the Ibrox team.

Goals from Dalglish and Dixie Deans gave Celtic a 2-0 win and had both Glasgow sides playing 30 games with 49 points each – but Celtic bettered their goal difference by 11.

Both teams carried on winning until April 21when both were on 53 points from 32 games played, with the Hoops 16 goals better off in the goals difference column.

There were still ‘only’ seven championship flags flying above The Jungle when Celtic beat Arbroath 4-0 on that day, but the likelihood of them being joined by an eighth increased when the news came through that only a late Alfie Conn goal has salvaged a point for Rangers at Pittodrie.

That put Celtic one point and 22 goals ahead and gave us the final-day drama of Rangers entertaining East Fife while the Hoops visited Easter Road.

A ‘short’ story from 1973 as the Celts mark historic title