Tankards, Clough & ‘creaky joints’ – Tennent’s Sixes returns

The lore is bizarre, endless and only serves to highlight how much the game has changed this century.

In 1988, when Rangers declined to take part, Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest were participants.

Just think for a second what it would take for a current-day Premier League side, built with bucketloads of cash, to send a six-a-side team north of the border.

Legendary boss Clough was unable to add the trophy to the European Cups he had won earlier that decade. The one that got away.

Dundee were the winners that year, but it is Partick Thistle who have been the holders since 1993. They did that without manager John Lambie even turning up.

The Thistle team were simply content with getting a day away from training, with success in the tournament an added bonus.

With no cash award on offer, tankards from the competition sponsors were the prize. They got put to good use, former Thistle striker Gerry Britton recalls.

“I remember we went to one of the Glasgow nightclubs, the Savoy,” Britton, now chief executive of the Firhill club, tells BBC Scotland.

“I’ve got memories of us standing at the bar with our tankards and asking for them to be filled with Tennent’s.”

Three decades on, Glasgow’s Savoy is still going strong.

If you find a group of six or so men with aching joints leaning against the bar there on Sunday, there is every chance they have spent their weekend at Braehead.