Dundee cross the road to face Dundee United tomorrow and a derby in August conjures up memories of a classic 4-3 win in which winger Joe McBride scored the winner.
Joe McBride will always have a special place in the hearts of Dundee fans after scoring a spectacular free kick to win one of the best and most exciting derbies of modern times. Keith Wright may have got the headlines with his hat-trick against United at Dens on August 19th 1989 but it was Joe McBride who got the winner when he curled a free kick into the corner of United’s net with 17 minutes left to win the game 4-3.
Joe McBride was born in Glasgow on August 7th 1960 and was the son of former Celtic player Joe who was a prolific scorer in the Sixties. Joe junior’s football career started when he was invited down to Goodison for trials and scored on his debut for Everton against Bolton in December 1979.
The winger spent three seasons on Merseyside before moving onto Rotherham where Emelyn Hughes was the manager but after they slipped out of Division Two, new manger George Kerr allowed him to join Joe Royle’s Oldham.
During the 1984/85 season Hibs manager John Blackley brought him back to Scotland and after almost exactly four years at Easter Road – during which he scored a brace in an Edinburgh derby at Tynecastle and played in the 1985 League Cup Final defeat to Aberdeen – Joe rejoined his former Hibs boss at Dens Park who was now assistant to Dave Smith for a fee of £50,000.
Alongside John Holt who was signed the same day, Joe made his debut in a 1-0 defeat to Motherwell at Fir Park on December 17th 1988 and quickly established himself in the first team. He scored his first goal for the club against his former club Hibs four weeks later.
He featured in every game of his debut season and came off the bench at Dunfermline in the first game of the 1989/90 season but it was in the next league game that Joe was really to make his name.
Dundee manager Gordon Wallace had promoted Joe to the starting line up for the next game against Clyde in the Skol Cup and was rewarded with a brace from the winger in the 5-1 win and he kept the number 11 shirt for the first home league of the season against Dundee United three days later.
It turned out to be a classic derby in front of 13,616 but it didn’t start very well for The Dee as they found themselves 2-0 within the first 24 minutes. However Keith Wright had other ideas and scored a brace to level it before half-time.
After the break United took the lead again before through Mixu Paatelainen but on the hour Keith Wright completed his hat-trick to level the scores again – the first Dundee player to score a hat-trick in a derby since Jimmy Chalmers in a League Cup quarter-final in 1956 and the first to do so in the league since the Second World War.
Dundee were now well on top and on 73 minutes Graham Harvey was brought down on the edge of box. Up stepped Joe McBride and at the TC Keay end curled a fantastic free kick into the top left hand corner of United keeper Scott Thomson’s net.
McBride had just written himself into dark blue folklore and his free kick proved to be the winner in a scintillating game. In an era when every game and every goal is filmed from multiple angles, it is criminal to note that there were no cameras at Dens that day and so no footage of a classic game. Instead that game is confined to the recollections of those who were there on that sunny day and it is a game that has lived long in the memory.
Dundee remained undefeated in the league to United in that campaign but slipped out of the league at the end of the season. Joe had also slipped out of the team but at the start of the 1990/91 First Division campaign he was back in the squad, despite being on the transfer list by Wallace.
In November Joe was on the bench for the B&Q Centenary Cup Final against Ayr United at Fir Park and came on for Colin West during extra-time. The Dark Blues lifted the trophy with a 3-2 win thanks to a hat-trick from Billy Dodds and his winners’ medal made up for runners-up one he had collected alongside captain Gordon Chisholm in the 1985 League Cup Final.
Two weeks after the final McBride scored a stunning goal against Morton at Dens but The Dee were unable to get promotion at the first time of asking and Joe left the club to join East Fife as The Dee looked to rebuild their squad for another, ultimately successful attempt at the First Division title.
After almost 100 games for East Fife, McBride left Bayview in 1994 and had spells at Albion Rovers, Livingston and Hamilton Academical. McBride became a coach during his time at Albion Rovers, and was made caretaker manager when Jimmy Crease resigned as manager in December 1995.
He subsequently became a youth coach at Celtic, developing players including Aiden McGeady, Paul Caddis and Cillian Sheridan but a reorganisation of Celtic’s coaching staff in 2008 meant that McBride left the club.
McBride then assisted Willie McStay at Újpest FC in Budapest, Hungary and in June 2010 joined Watford as a youth coach, working under the management of fellow Scot Malky Mackay. McBride followed Mackay to Cardiff City and was appointed first team coach but returned to Scotland in October 2014, when he was named as the new Hibernian under-20 player development coach.
At Dundee Joe McBride will always be remembered as a derby hero and the man who finally sank United with a fantastic free kick in a famous win on a sunny August day at Dens.
The Dark Blues will be looking to create some new August derby memories at Tannadice tomorrow.
Honours at Dundee:
B&Q Scottish League Centenary Cup winners: 1990/91
Appearances, Goals:
League: 27 + 19 subs, 5 goals
Scottish Cup: 1 + 1 sub
League Cup: 2 + 1 sub, 2 goals
Centenary Cup: 1 sub
Totals: 52, 7 goals
