First Division. Nothing special bellow the leading two teams, except the the little stir at the very bottom. SC Neusiedl finished last with record so pitiful, it deserves mentioning: 1 win, 2 ties, and 27 lost matches! 4 points. They scored 10 goals, but received 102.
15th was Union Wels with 14 points – it is unclear now when exactly they were disbanded – during or after the season – but their end probably is remembered and cursed in another town, for it dragged down their team.
Under normal circumstances SV Sankt Veit would have been safe: they finished 14th with 21 points. But now they were hurled into promotion/relegation play-off and lost it to Donwitzer SV Alpine. This play-off did not make any sense – two teams were coming up normally from second division, taking the empty places of the relegated and it did not matter at all that Union Wels was no longer alive for the completion of the top league. On top of it, the play-off did not do anything for improving the league: one very weak club was replaced by another. The only result was local: SV Sankt Veit lost their chance to play at least one more season top league football.
Favoritner AC ended 13th with 25 points.
SK VOEST (Linz) was 12th with 25 points and that was perhaps the clearest sample of Austrian troubles: 10 years ago VOEST were champions. After that decline started, bringing them deeper and deeper down. There was no way to even imagine recovery: money were getting shorter, thus every next years VOEST had weaker squad.
SC Eisenstadt – 11th with 25 points. From their standpoint, may be a good season. Staying in the top league practically spelled out ‘success’.
Austria (Salzburg) – 10th with 27 points. Their usual insignificant performance.
Wiener Sport-Club – 9th with 27 points. Another example of the Austrian problems: Vienna was not able to support so many clubs. Wiener Sport-Club was going down and survival was the first and may be only concern: they were losing support, which meant low gates revenue, thus weaker and weaker squads, resulting with lack of wealthy sponsors, the vicious road down.
Grazer AK – 8th with 32 points. Nothing new.
Austria (Klagenfurt) – 7th with 34 points. Considering their misfortunes in the 1970s, perhaps a rare strong season. Most likely just a single good season, not to be repeated.
FC Admira/Wacker – 6th with 36 points. Losing ground, but not as much as Wiener Sport-Club or First Vienna yet. On the slippery slop, though and no doubt about it.
Compared to the general state of affairs of the Austrian clubs, Sturm (Graz) was doing well, so it is good to take a closer look. They finished 5th with 37 points. With better goal-difference cloud have been 4th. However, unable to do better than that – and, mind, Sturm was solidly among the leaders since the early 70s. But not a title contender. And a look at the squad pretty much tells why: to stay solid and ahead of most Austrian teams, Sturm depended on handful of players, none of them really famous: true, Jurtin and Pichler used to play for the national team, but that was all domestic talent and it was difficult to keep them in Graz. The rest were second rank foreigners from Yugoslavia (Bakota, Vuksanovic) and Hungary (Szokolai). The whole solidity of Sturm really hand on the simple fact that nobody was interested in their top players, they were either too old or not all that great. If there was bright talent, it was not going to last. That was all a good Austrian club could hope for: to have 5-6 relatively sound players, who were not bright enough to attract the interest of richer clubs and to be relatively cheap because of that.
Wacker (Innsbruck) – 4th with 37 points. Did well, even it looked like they were coming back, but only the future would tell were truly returning to leading position of not.
Linzer ASK – 3rd with 42 points. Strong season for them, but LASK, like Sturm, depended on few better imported players and occasional domestic talent. A title was not even dreamed of, the real ‘success’ of the club was largely local – they were stronger than VOEST, which meant they had better financial options.
So, as it was more than predictable and expected, the Austrian championship was boiled down to the traditional battle between Rapid and Austria. Both teams were clearly different than the rest of the country’s clubs – they had more money and thus were able to gather practically all top Austrian players, a small number to begin with and even smaller when those going to play abroad were deduced. Bitter reality: even Austria and Rapid were not able to compete with relatively small Belgian clubs, not to mention richer foreigners. And that affected also imports: true, Rapid and Austria were able to get better foreign players than the other Austrian clubs, but… aging foreigners. Anyhow, the two clubs were in a category of their own and produced high drama to the very end of the season, when they still finished with equal points and goal-difference determined the winner.
Rapid ended 2nd – 19 wins, 9 ties, 2 losses, 47 points, 71-18 goal-difference. Very strong defensively, but may be not adventurous enough, despite the fact that scoring machine Hans Krankl was leading them. Or may be because of that, for Krankl was aging and beyond his peak.
Austria prevailed largely by scoring more goals – they won 21 games, tied 5, lost 4, but ended with 85-28 goal-difference, which gave them the title. Of course, it was great to come ahead of the arch-rivals, but Austria also had to think of the future: Herbert Prohaska, their motor, was clearly going to play abroad. The other key players were getting too old – their long-time captain Sara and the bunch of foreigners: Nyilasi and Magyar from Hungary and Mustedanagic from Yugoslavia. Concilia and Polster were not going to last either. Yes, Austria had more than that, but it needed key players urgently. More urgently than Rapid.