Peterhead v Dundee: Visitors bid to end 112-year wait for cup win

Dundee are looking to reach their first Scottish Cup final since 2003

When Hibs finally completed their 114-year wait to win the Scottish Cup in 2016, they passed an unwanted baton on to Dundee. Now the fingers point towards the next big club who haven't won the cup since the days of horse-drawn trams.

Not since 1910 have Dundee brought the trophy back to Tayside. City rivals Dundee Hibernian were less than a year old and still 13 years away from changing their name to United. Their 112-year wait has been made more difficult by twice peeking out of the curtains to see the silverware arrive a little further up Sandeman Street decorated in the tangerine and black ribbons of their city rivals.

On Monday evening, Dundee travel to Peterhead hoping to keep alive hopes of a first final in 19 years.

Jim Duffy, who led Dundee to that final in 2003, tells BBC Scotland about getting into an injured striker's head, dealing with the weight of expectation, and going close to stopping Rangers' 2003 treble charge.

'We felt like a big club'

Balmoor Stadium, where James McPake will take his charges on Monday, is a far cry - over 4,000 miles - from when Duffy took Dundee to the Caribbean for a winter training camp in 2003.

They boasted big players back then. A sprinkle of top foreign imports such as Julian Speroni, Giorgi Nemsadze, Fabian Caballero and Nacho Novo combined with a solid Scottish core of Barry Smith, Gavin Rae, Mark Burchill and Steve Lovell, and they returned suntanned and confident of taking on all-comers.

"We went away to Trinidad and had a great trip, trained in the sunshine, had a couple of games," said Duffy. "We felt like a big club. We brought that mentality back with us - the players enjoyed it."

Dundee returned to see off Partick Thistle at Firhill in the third round of the cup, before beating Aberdeen. However, Duffy admits it took a tough team talk to conjure up an extra-time victory against Falkirk in a quarter-final replay. With this team tied at 1-1 with the then First Division leaders, Duffy pulled aside his 10-goal striker, who answered the call by scoring twice and putting Dundee into their first Scottish Cup final since 1987.

"I can remember sitting the players down after the 90 minutes and saying to Steve Lovell, 'look, we really need you here'. He was struggling a bit with injury and was maybe thinking he needed to be substituted, but we got inside his head and asked him to give us a little bit more.

"In the second period of extra time he was immense and we managed to get the result."

'Expectation weighed heavily on us'

Dundee avoided Rangers and Motherwell in the last four, instead landing lower division Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Duffy revealed his club resisted calls for the game to be played at McDiarmid Park despite the two sides only selling around a quarter of Hampden's 52,000 capacity. Duffy made the decision because he felt his team had suffered from a similar move eight years earlier.

He said: "There was talk about moving the semi-final to Perth but we felt if we were going to get to the final you're better to have played at Hampden. You're better to have got used to the dressing rooms, the drive up, the hotel, the preparation.

"I had been in the League Cup final in 1995 [2-0 defeat by Aberdeen] and to me when the players got to Hampden, because we'd played the semi-final at Perth, the players were almost like rabbits caught in the lights. They were just completely overwhelmed with the occasion because they had never experienced it before. It was too much on the day and I didn't want that to be the same again.

"The semi-final was probably the most nervous one. People saw Inverness as not the most difficult tie. The Dundee fans, I remember a lot of them had booked hotels for the final before we had played the semi-final, and I think that filtered through to the players.

"It had been a long time since Dundee had been in a Scottish Cup final - that made the game really, really nervous. And you could sense the players being really nervous. The responsibility of trying to get Dundee to their first cup final in nearly 40 years was weighing quite heavily on the players."

Jim Duffy led Dundee to the 1995 League Cup final and the 2003 Scottish Cup final

'Remember to exhale'

Three weeks before the final they had threatened to derail Rangers' title bid. Caballero scored twice for the hosts and only a late Mikel Arteta penalty earned the visitors a draw at Dens Park. And the Argentine was in inspired form again in the final, while Smith smacked a post in the fourth minute and Lovell and Novo both went close.

Luck deserted the Dees though, and Lorenzo Amoruso - in his final game for Rangers - rose to meet ex-Dundee man Neil McCann's free-kick to head in the only goal of the game. It was tough on Duffy's side who had given as good as they had got over the 90 minutes.

"I remember telling the team that in 1995 we inhaled but we forgot to exhale," said Duffy, who had been player-manager in that final. "In 1995 we held our breath a bit and got overwhelmed and played within ourselves. But the last thing I said to the players as they went out in 2003 was, 'go and win it'. I believed and the players believed.

"Rangers didn't create too many chances but they had already won the League Cup and the league, they had winners in their team. That and their experience of seeing the game out was vital for them. We felt we matched Rangers on the day. But you have to put it into perspective - even though I had good players, Rangers had multi-million pound players."

Rangers played the final 15 minutes with 10 men after McCann was injured, while goalkeeper Stefan Klos struggled on with a hamstring problem. It's a case of 'what ifs', but had Dundee managed to force extra time, could they have gone on to win it?

"Their manager, Alex McLeish, told me afterwards that they were worried about extra time," said Duffy. "I'd have fancied us."