FLIGHT FROM BACAU

A caper in the 1969/70 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup presented Kilmarnock Football Club with some of their most resilient European adversaries.

Windswept, militaria-laden passport officers flanked by lines of fighter jets, a henchman goalkeeper specialising in lethal pull-and-punch handshakes, and a referee who “didn’t see nothing” led our adventurers to a chilly denouement: a game of football’s desperate, wheezing, grasping attempt to break free of its predictable fate.

Club elder statesmen, Jimmy Cook, Ross Mathie and George Maxwell look back at the adventures of a lifetime.