Jimmy Nicholl on 'stroke of genius' which helped Raith Rovers shock Celtic in 1994 League Cup final

Current Northern Ireland assistant gaffer Nicholl, 67, who bossed Raith in two separate spells from 1990 to ’96 and 1997 to ’99, had one of his greatest moments in football at the ground of his former club Rangers on November 27, 1994.

He said: “It was a one off. The question was: ‘If Celtic had an off day, were we good enough to take advantage of that?’ We had just started getting a bit of form going in and Celtic’s form wasn’t great.

"We played the kids – Stevie Crawford, Colin Cameron and Jason Dair – in that game and it worked out. No disrespect to the players who were left out – Jason Rowbotham and Ian Redford – the older ones, but I just thought that Celtic had Paul McStay and John Collins as playmakers and I just had to try and stop them.

"I called Crawford, Cameron and Dair into my room the night before the final and I told them they were starting.

"Whether that was a good idea or not, I didn’t know.

"But it’s only hearing the lads talking now that finding out they were playing the night before was a benefit to them.

"They could phone their families and they were all excited.

"So instead of telling their families: ‘I don’t know if I’m playing and I don’t know if you should come to the game’, they were saying: ‘I’m starting’.

"People say that was a stroke of genius, but it wasn’t because you just don’t know.

"At the end of the day you look at it and 38-year-old David Narey was man-of-the-match! So it didn’t just hinge on the energy of the young ones.

"If we’d matched Celtic but didn’t have the same quality as them, I think we were going to struggle but the young ones were at them for the first 20 minutes.

"But then McStay and Collins took over and you could tell the quality of those two players.

“At the end of extra-time, we still had the legs and the quality to keep going.

"Throwing the young boys in I was taking a chance, but with Crawford scoring the first goal and Dair creating the equaliser for Gordon Dalziel, it just worked out.

"And Cameron also showed great energy.

"I thought the kids were really good in extra-time and we could have won it.”

Nicholl was speaking after attending last Sunday’s commemorative 30th anniversary lunch at the Dean Park Hotel, attended by several former players, supporters and the current management team.

“I just loved the response of all the supporters we saw,” Nicholl said. “It was really good and I never get tired of going to these events.

“I think it’s the older you get, you don’t take the game for granted and you’ve not to be embarrassed by taking a pat on the back from supporters.

"Clips were shown of each round, leading up to the final. So whoever the goalscorers were, they were the ones being interviewed.

"And it always amazes me that at a Q and A, the players’ memories are different from mine!

"I was on last to speak, and before that I loved hearing all the players’ versions of what happened, going to McDonald’s on a Saturday morning before games and I thought: ‘Jeez, I didn’t know that!’”