It is interesting to note the great coverage in England of Arsenal's attempt to achieve a unique cup double in England this season and the more unusual circumstances of them playing the same opponents in both Wembley finals - Sheffield Wednesday.

DUNDEE UP FOR THE CUP DOUBLE!

We look back at Billy Campbell's Ghost 1992 Dundee FC programme piece which features our games against Hibernian in the 1974 Scottish Cup.

This is not entirely new in Scotland with both old firm sides having won trebles over throughout their chequered histories and Aberdeen having achieved the cup double as recently as 1989/90. Even today's opponents, Hibs harboured dreams of a cup double last season when after securing the League Cup they felt their name was also on the Scottish Cup - unfortunately Airdrie had other ideas and duly sent them packing on their own patch at Easter Road!

Dundee had an early opportunity to illuminate the history books in season 1951/52 when having already won the League Cup against Rangers, faced Motherwell in the Scottish Cup Final and were red hot favourites to pick up the second cup - this fell flat when they were crushed by four second half Motherwell goals to confound the bookies of the day!

More recently, in 1973/74 Dundee had another glorious chance to achieve this fantastic double when they won the League Cup in December 1973 by beating Celtic 1 - 0 at Hampden and at the turn of the year embarked on a great Scottish Cup campaign that many felt just had to end in double glory! After beating Aberdeen 2 - 0 at Pittodrie and then Rangers 3 - 0 at Ibrox, Dundee were drawn against today's opponents Hibs again away from Dens Park.

Hibs in those days were a terrific side regularly finishing runners up in the league and not too far away from finding the consistency desired to become real champions and players such as Pat Stanton, Alex Cropley, Alan Gordon and the late Erich Schaedlar were real quality and a tremendous test for Dundee's cup double ambitions.

The roads and miles to Edinburgh on 16 March 1974 were clogged with dark blue scarves out of car windows and dozens of coaches headed for Edinburgh for the next test in Dundee' s road to Hampden.

I can remember travelling regularly with my father, brother in law and mate in these days and the sense of anticipation was such that we fully expected Dundee to win games like these as we were more than a match for anyone that season - also having recently won at Parkhead in the league.

Once inside Easter Road it was obvious the dark blue contingent was huge - with no segregation it was difficult to tell how many were there but estimates at the time put it at around 10-12,000!

Once the teams had emerged the reception for Dundee was incredible - Dundee fans were everywhere - on all four sides of Easter Road and when the standites starting their foot-stomping and regular 'Dundee, Dundee' chants, the rest of Easter Road joined in and suddenly it became like a home game - it was awesome to a young lad like me.

There was the by now familiar sight of the wee laddie of around six running on from the Dundee support to give Thomson Allan the Dundee good luck charm of a cardboard cup wrapped in silver foil to the great roar of approval of the dark blue fans - the wee soul would probably be frog-marched out of the ground nowadays for a night in some Edinburgh nick!

The game itself was fantastic - the score see-sawing from 1 - 0 to Dundee to 2 - 1 to Hibs, then 3 - 2 Dundee, then finally a memorable 3 - 3 draw and a replay at Dens.

Dundee's scorers were Jocky Scott, John Duncan and Jimmy Wilson while the Hibs trio came from a great hat-trick by Alan Gordon, who went on to play for both Dundee clubs as well as both Edinburgh clubs.

I can still remember the TV highlights at night when, after Dundee went 3 - 2 up the BBC cameras focussed on the Dundee fans and it looked like a solid mass of joy and hysteria as thousands of Dee fans jigged with delight on Archie MacPherson’s Sportscene.

The crowd that afternoon was around 28,000 and as the Dundee fans headed back across the forth bridge tooting their horns even they could not have foreseen what the midweek replay would bring.

THE REPLAY

The following Wednesday I headed up to Dens around 6:30 from Broughty Ferry and on a beautiful spring evening all I could see ahead of our car was a huge tailback of traffic not moving - surely everyone couldn't be going to Dens? Well they were, and luckily we got in around 7:20 where the ground was packed and evidently there were huge queues outside, as the first game at Easter road had caught everyone's imagination especially with it being on telly.

When the game began no Dundee fan could have forecast the scenario as Dundee raced into a three goal half-time lead through Jocky Scott, John Duncan and Bobby Wilson. The second half was an anti-climax as Hibs settled and Dundee played out time having done the hard work so early. Hibs had brought a huge support to Dens and as in the first game the away fans must have numbered around 10,000.

The official attendance was given as 30,388 with an estimate of 4,000 locked out or having given up in frustration and gone home! The receipts were £10,814 which illustrates the value of the pound then and now!

This era was one of obvious great excitement and I can remember the Courier’s main news item the next day was all about the traffic jams through Fife to the Tay Bridge with Hibs fans pouring north and how thousands of fans of both sides did not get into dens until half-time and had missed all the goals.

The teams in both ties were:

Dundee: Allan, R.Wilson, Gemmell, Ford, Stewart, Phillip, J.Wilson, Robinson, Duncan, Scott, Lambie.

Hibs: McArthur, Smith, Schaedler, Spalding, Black, Blackley, O’Rourke, Stanton, Gordon, Cropley, Duncan.

At this time Dundee were becoming favourites for the cup and with Celtic in the semis it was a chance to avenge previous semi defeats.

I was on a residential pre-university course at St.Andrews and five of us sneaked away to Hampden where we were again disappointed as Dundee fell to the Celts yet again by 1-0 with captain Tommy Gemmell caught dribbling on the edge of his box only for Ronnie Glavin to dispossess him and score the winner.

This ended the Dundee dream of double cup honours but the quality of football then even moved a couple of journalists to forecast Dundee for league honours the following season - we all know they were wrong but the football and challenge made by this club then still gives me my greatest memories of supporting the Dees and as I mentioned earlier in this article wouldn’t it be just marvellous to see some of these old triumphs on a centenary video - what about it board members?