THE SUNDAY CORRESPONDENTS (one day early)

It was 15 years ago to the day.

Raith Rovers from Scotland, playing their fifth European match in their history travelled to Germany where FC Bayern Munich were playing their 200th European tie in all competitions. It was the UEFA Cup. Raith had qualified by recording a historic shock victory over Celtic in the previous season's League Cup. Bayern were disappointed at only qualifying for the UEFA Cup having become accustomed to winning the Bundesliga and playing in the European Cup.

It was the second leg of the tie, Rovers having lost 2-0 in Scotland in a match switched to a ground in Edinburgh some 40 miles away as ours was too small to meet the regulations.

We had a team of players barely known outside of Kirkcaldy, home town of Raith Rovers. Their was a team of household names:-

Oliver Kahn, Thomas Strunz, Markus Babbel, Thomas Helme, Alexander Zickler,
Dietmar Hamann, Ciriaco Sforza, Andreas Herzog ,Christian Nerlinger, Jean-Pierre Papin and Jürgen Klinsmann.

We gave away an early penalty. Papin, the normally deadly French striker misses it by miles. We took confidence from this and slowly edged our way into the game. It looked like we were going to get to half-time at 0-0.

Then in the 43rd minute, we won a free kick. It was taken by Danny Lennon. It went past the wall and came of the head of Andreas Herzog taking a wicked deflection that left Oliver Kahn dumbstruck, stranded and beaten all ends up.

FC Bayern 0-1 Raith Rovers

And it stayed that way till half-time. Those 15 minutes at the Olympic Stadium were the most incredible I have ever experienced at a football match. Jacques the Kipper and I just stared at each other in total disbelief. Every Rovers fan - all 3000 or so of us who had made the trip -couldn't stop taking pictures of the giant scoreboard. Whatever else was to happen, we were part of an historical event.....

Two minutes into the second half and Rovers had a more than decent chance to get the equaliser but it went agonisingly wide.

Three minutes later, Rovers sweeper Ronnie Coyle - my best mate to this date and the whole reason I started watching Rovers in the first place in the early 90s - slipped as he went to clear his lines, and as he fell, the ball was stolen from him and squared to Klinsmann who had the simplest of tasks to put it beyond our keeper. Game good as over as we now needed to score another two goals. In the 64th minute Babbel made it 2-1 on the night and 4-1 on aggregate which was the end of the scoring.

We weren't disgraced by any means. We went back to Scotland and achieved our main aim of securing our status in the top league of Scottish football (sadly we were relegated the season after and haven't been back since).

Bayern? Well in Round 3 they beat Sporting Lisbon by 7-2 on aggregate and in the quarter-finals enjoyed a similar score against Nottingham Forest. It was Barcelona in the semi-finals and a 4-3 triumph, while the two-legged final saw them beat Bordeaux by 5-1. Oh and they also won the Bundesliga that season as well just to prove how good they were.

In other words, it was Barcelona who gave them the only fright in their European run - Barcelona and Raith Rovers.

And folk sometimes are daft enough to ask me why I love football......

mp3 : Editors - Munich

Here's some footage of THAT goal:-



Oh and here's some drunken idiots re-creating the goal and the fan celebrations when they visited Munich in 2008:-



That's Jacques the Kipper with the scarf. The masks portray famous Rovers fans including former prime minister Gordon Brown, author Iain Rankine.....and me!!

History re-written as Rovers win 2-0 on the night and then win 5-4 on penalties......

If only.