In Scottish football, the term nine in a row refers to winning the league championship in nine consecutive years. This has been accomplished twice by Celtic and once by Rangers. It has become a commonly used phrase, and a topic which has drawn much attention, as has the goal of winning ten in a row.
Scottish football has been dominated by two clubs, Celtic and Rangers, both based in Glasgow and collectively known as the Old Firm, since the introduction of a national league system in 1890. While many league seasons have been closely fought between the pair, and have sometimes involved other clubs, there have been periods of dominance by one club, with three cases of nine championship wins in succession since the 1970s.Celtic & Rangers: Why does 10-in-a-row matter so much?, Martin Watt, BBC Sport, 25 July 2020.Stein, Smith or Lennon: whose 9-in-a-row was best?, Alan Pattullo, The Scotsman, 19 May 2020.
The feat was first achieved by Celtic between the 1965–66 and 1973–74 seasons, during which they also became European champions in 1967. Their run was eventually stopped in 1975 by Rangers, who later received significant financial investment and matched the achievement between 1988–89 and 1996–97. Celtic won the next title in 1998 and prevented their record being broken. After the two clubs exchanged the trophy regularly for 14 seasons (the same period as had elapsed between the end of the first sequence and the start of the second), Celtic then went on another run of championships from 2011–12 to 2019–20, with Rangers out of the top division for four seasons of that period after their liquidation in 2012, with a new company taking over. This was the only spell in the league's history that either club had not been in the top division. Rangers managed to strengthen sufficiently to 'stop the 10' in 2020–21 with an unbeaten season.
Similar and longer winning runs have been recorded in other countries; however it is in Scotland that the specific term has become most commonplace, having been part of the nation's football landscape since the 1970s, remaining prominent due to the same mark being achieved twice more – but never bettered – in subsequent generations.The Celtic and Rangers All Star 9 in a Row XI as two legends pick their teams, Gary Ralston / Fraser Wilson, Daily Record, 1 June 2020. Celtic is the only European club to win nine consecutive titles on two occasions, and in no other country has such a total been achieved more than twice (either by a single club or multiple clubs).
Background: 1890s to 1960s
From the formation of the Scottish Football League in 1890, Celtic and Rangers based in Glasgow were among the dominant clubs along with Edinburgh-based Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian – amateurs Queen's Park, also based in Glasgow who had dominated the Scottish Cup up to that point, declined to enter the new league in its first decade and were never to be a significant force in the future, with their most significant role being to provide their large ground Hampden Park for use as a neutral venue for cup finals (and the home of the Scottish national team). Rangers, founded in 1872, set the standard for SFL performance with a perfect season in 1898–99,The first great Rangers team whose 'perfect season' remains unique in British football 122 years on, Matthew Lindsay, Glasgow Times, 7 January 2021. winning all 18 league fixtures to eclipse the achievement of Celtic who had gone through the previous campaign unbeaten, but had drawn three matches. However, Rangers were weakened economically from 1902 when a new wooden stand collapsed at their Ibrox Park ground during a Scotland fixture, killing 25 spectators and injuring several hundred and necessitating more investment to rebuild the venue again. After another Glasgow team, Third Lanark, won the league in 1903–04, Celtic – backed by a large following among the Irish immigrant community in the West of Scotland from their formation in 1888 – took the initiative and won six successive championships between 1904–05 and 1909–10, guided by 'secretary-manager' Willie Maley who remained in charge for 40 years.Celtic's six in a row, the first time, Tony Jensen, Celtic Quick News, 16 April 2016. Rangers recovered to win the next three titles, then Celtic won four in succession during the atypical conditions of World War I, when the league took the decision to keep running. That period also saw the start of the Old Firm rivalry between the two clubs, initially on the basis of sporting popularity (the 1909 Scottish Cup Final replay between them at Hampden ended in a riot by supporters of both clubs who suspected the drawn result had been fixed to ensure another lucrative fixture) then along sectarian lines, with Rangers becoming identified as the Protestant and Unionist (both in a Scottish and Irish sense) antithesis of Celtic, whose supporters were largely Catholic and sympathisers of Irish nationalism (and the IRA in some cases), an issue which became more prominent and violent from the 1910s. At the same time a large contingent of Ulstermen, many of them Orange Order members, moved from the Belfast shipyards to work in those of Govan where Rangers were based, attaching their cultural conditions to the club including the exclusion of Catholics from their workplace, a policy unofficially adopted by Rangers for decades to come and further entrenching the position of the two as polar opposites in Glaswegian societyExplained: The Bitter Religious Divide Behind Celtic-Rangers Rivalry, Pundit Arena, 21 May 2018. (separate schooling systems for the two communities, initially set up amidst an atmosphere of hostility towards the Irish-Catholic immigrant community, meant that the mindset of local children was typically set on which values should be followed, including football affiliation in a society already fixated on the sport, from a young age).
With Rangers and Celtic each enjoying the support of effectively half of Glasgow and half of Northern Ireland, their financial strength ensured they stayed near the top of the Scottish League almost every year, although in the period between the wars, Rangers under Bill Struth were very much dominant in terms of league success:Blue and silver blend at Ibrox, FIFA.com, 23 September 2010.The on-field history of Rangers Football Club 1873–2012, BBC News, 14 February 2012. from 1917–18 to 1938–39 they won 16 of the 22 titles, with occasional challenges from Celtic as well as Airdrieonians (who finished second to Rangers four times) and Motherwell, (also runners-up four times, the only title in their history in 1931–32 broke a run of five by Rangers, who then claimed three more).
The Gers continued to dominate in the unofficial competitions during World War II, winning all seven of the league titles and numerous cups. As they had won the last official championship before the war and also won the first after it, some supporters retrospectively claimed this sequence to be the first run of 'nine in a row'. Celtic won nothing during the period as their business model foundered. When the war ended, it was the Edinburgh clubs who challenged during the 1950s, with first Hibs (3 titles, 3 times runners-up with their Famous Five forward line) then Hearts (2 titles, 3 runners-up) giving chase to Rangers (7 titles including the country's first treble incorporating the new Scottish League Cup, 4 runners-up) and markedly stronger than Celtic (1 title, 1 runner-up) while Aberdeen took a league flag in 1954–55 and the likes of Partick Thistle and East Fife also finished ahead of the Hoops more than once in what was a strong period for Scottish football in general but not for Celtic. That pattern continued into the early 1960s, with Rangers the most consistently strong team, with their achievements including a second treble in 1962–63 and a European Cup Winners' Cup final appearance in 1961, with Celtic providing less of a challenge than other smaller clubs: in this period Dundee – champions in 1961–62 – and particularly Kilmarnock who were second four times before taking the title ahead of Hearts and Dunfermline Athletic in 1964–65, the only occasion when neither of the Old Firm clubs finished in the top three.
The first Nine: Celtic, 1965 to 1974
Amidst this backdrop of long-term underachievement by Celtic, Jock Stein was appointed the club's manager in March 1965, replacing Jimmy McGrory and having previously been reserve team coach from 1957 to 1960. He had then moulded Dunfermline into the strong team they were at that time, and then enjoyed a brief but impressive period at Hibs. Celtic had several promising young players in their squad, as was their policy of the time, but they had not had sufficiently talented older teammates or a sophisticated tactical plan to lead them on to greater success; however, this group, including Billy McNeill, Bobby Murdoch, Tommy Gemmell, Bobby Lennox, Jimmy Johnstone and John Hughes plus the older Stevie Chalmers and John Clark did have several years of first team experience behind them. With an attacking playing system and strong man-management, Stein's impact was immediate, as Celtic reached the 1965 Scottish Cup Final and won it by beating Dunfermline, the club's first major honour since the 1957 Scottish League Cup Final (a 7–1 win over Rangers which was very much against the trend of success in that period) and a first medal for the players, who had lost in Old Firm finals of that season's League Cup and the 1962–63 Scottish Cup, plus a previous final to Stein's Dunfermline in the 1960–61 Scottish Cup. By then Bertie Auld had returned to the club, and Stein quickly augmented his squad with goalscorer Joe McBride while promoting Jim Craig and retaining veteran goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson whom he had previously allowed to leave Hibs).
This squad nucleus won the 1965–66 Scottish Division One title and the 1965–66 Scottish League Cup with a win over Rangers, though they lost to the same opponents in the 1966 Scottish Cup Final after a replay and were narrowly eliminated from the Cup Winners' Cup at the semi-final stage. The battle for the league was a tight affair with Rangers, as it would also be for the next two seasons,Nine In A Row The First Time Round, David Potter, Celtic Fanzine, 18 April 2020. with Celtic's higher scoring rate prior to the last game of the season (105 goals to their rivals' 87, with five or more scored on 10 occasions including a 5–1 victory in the pivotal New Year Old Firm match) ensuring they would be champions on goal average in any case; they still won the last fixture away to Motherwell to claim a first title in 12 seasonsScotland – List of Champions, James M. Ross and Karel Stokkermans, RSSSF, 25 March 2021. and overcome the psychological blows of losing the cup final and the European semi-final in the preceding weeks.Celtic Win League Championship, The Glasgow Herald, 9 May 1966, scan via The Celtic Wiki. Older hands like John Divers, and Jim Kennedy were allowed to move on,Jim Kennedy | Former Celtic and Scotland defender, Evening Times, 6 December 2003.Former Celt Divers dies, Sky Sports, 23 September 2014. while Ian Young remained in the squad but played no active role in the following campaign.Ian Young dead: Former Celtic defender dies aged 76 after illness, Adam Hamdani, The Independent, 11 December 2019.