Graham Spiers: Ecstasy and agony for Rangers fans

Published on Thursday 16 February 2012 11:56

FROM the heady highs of matchday anticipation to the abject lows of watching a club in its death-throes, supporters are riding a roller-coaster, writes Graham Spiers

It HAS been an incredible journey with Rangers. For 41 years I have been watching this great football club – I suddenly feel middle-aged – ever since my father first lifted me over an Ibrox turnstile sometime during the 1970-71 season. Back then, I now know, it was the age of innocence. Today, I am suddenly confronted by a club in its death-throes.

I feel like a ringside witness to the rise and fall of Rangers over all these years: first as a fan on the terracing and then, for the past 20 years, as a journalist, often finding myself inside Ibrox speaking to the managers, players and chairmen of the club. Along with the Scottish legal system and the Church of Scotland, Rangers FC was once described as “one of the three great pillars of Scottish society”. In one sense this seems a ludicrous description but, accurate or not, it is a pillar that is now coming crashing down.

It was intoxicating being a Rangers fan as a kid. Football fans the world over will tell you something similar: I can still feel the pulsing excitement in my veins, just thinking back to those Saturday afternoons when the matches loomed. Ibrox back then was the classic, oval arena in the British football tradition and you simply couldn’t wait to feast your eyes on its great edifice.

Like many fathers and sons at the football, my Dad and I stood in the same spot week in, week out at Ibrox: two-thirds of the way down the terracing at the uncovered Broomloan or “away” end. From being initially “lifted over”, I would scamper with pulsating excitement ahead of my parent, up the vast steps to the top of the arena, then along maybe 20 yards beside a wall, to be greeted by the mesmerising scene before me: the gleaming pitch, the gathering crowd, plus that unique “football smell” of Woodbines, pies and Bovril. Just writing this now, I am transported back to that magical world.

This was the early 1970s. Back then Rangers had a team that, for me, hardly ever seemed to change, and whose line-up I can still reel off, like stanzas from a poem, in that quaint 70s way when football teams were cited in clusters of threes: “McCloy, Jardine and Mathieson; Greig, Jackson and Smith; McLean, Conn and Stein; MacDonald and Johnston…” I haven’t even bothered to check this line-up on Google because I don’t need to. That team, give or take the odd name-change due to injury, is embedded in my brain.

The one game, until I was 12 or 13, that I was never taken to was the Old Firm fixture. “Please, Dad, please!” I would implore him from about the age of eight or nine, but he would hear none of it. Thus I would be exposed to the ritual – and the agony – of the famous Grandstand teleprinter as it clattered away from about 4:45pm on BBC1 on a Saturday, chattering out the football scores while you placed your hands over your eyes.

I came from a split footballing family. My sister was a Celtic supporter and, invariably, as I recall it now, Celtic got the better of Rangers, home or away, in those early 1970s days. The intonation on Grandstand as the “classified results” were read out was solemn, painful and recurring. “Celtic 2, Rangers 0” or “Rangers 1, Celtic 2” seemed to be results arriving with a painful consistency. My first Old Firm game was actually in January, 1975, when Rangers, on a ploughed Ibrox pitch, hammered Celtic by 3-0. It was a dark, freezing winter’s day, but my euphoria that night was uncontainable.

Back then, even as a kid, you did have a slight sense of some of the sins of the club. Rangers supporters had a problematic reputation, and I was there at Ibrox when the club’s then general-manager, Willie Waddell, took to the pitch in the late 1970s to make a public statement from a podium, in which he distanced the club from its erstwhile policy of religious discrimination.

My memory might be deceiving me, but Waddell that day, I believe, delivered his statement wearing a Rangers top – I even think in a red top, which at the time was the club’s “second strip”.

Either way, as I got older, I had a dawning sense of what the Scottish sportswriter Ian Archer once called Rangers’ “occasional disgrace and permanent embarrassment”. Even so, it never diminished my appetite for the club.

If you had said to any of us back then that Rangers FC would die, it would have seemed a ludicrous, fanciful notion. The club appeared as strong and immoveable as the famous red brickwork of the main Ibrox facade. Yes, football clubs needed “running” and “management”. But death? Disappearance? Absolutely no chance. That kind of thing, surely, happened to clubs like Bradford Park Avenue or Third Lanark. Rangers were the absolute embodiment of British might and strength. Nothing in heaven or earth, it was believed, could ever remove Rangers.

Four decades on from those days, these are agonising times for Rangers fans. The club has been done-in by reckless mismanagement, some huge dollops of arrogance and hubris, and what seems to have been a wilful disregard for the laws of the land in terms of tax-paying. The club is on its knees, indeed, it might even be in the process of being lowered into the grave. The truth is, the mighty Rangers forget that, either in love or war, there are both rules and consequences.

On a personal note, I seem to have spent the past two days hawking myself from one broadcast studio to another, metaphorically kicking Sir David Murray at every turn. It is not a type of punditry that has sat easily with me. Murray, principally through his decision to utilise employee benefit trusts (EBTs) at the club, has been the unintending architect of Rangers’ ruin. But it is done now. What is the point, I sometimes think, in kicking and kicking him?

Murray wanted only the very best for Rangers. He never meant the club any harm, as weird as that statement now looks. His ambitions were vast for the club and, the truth is, the vast body-politic of the Rangers support bought into it. Under Murray, as Rangers made swingeing annual losses of £29 million one season and £31m the next, how many of those supporters who are now bleating raised their voices in protest at the time?

As for Craig Whyte … how can I put this safely and euphemistically? The word “slippery” might have been invented for this shambolic character. In courts of law in England and Scotland, Whyte has been panned for some of his business practices and, inheriting the Murray mess, he has now led Rangers into administration and to the point of extinction. In all of these dodgy Rangers dealings, I believe taking the club into administration has been a part of the Whyte plan all along.

Rangers supporters are rightly angered. It has been a disgusting betrayal of the club and its standing in the world of football. This is no over-excited newspaper headline: Rangers as we know it might die in the coming weeks. In my lifetime, I feel as if I was there at the intoxicating beginning, and now at the abject end. When I take a step back from it all, it still seems scarcely believable.

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25

juewhyte

Sunday, March 4, 2012 at 01:19 PM

a very readable article...please some onewith a brainand an IQ that reaches2 digits why do Rangers hate catholics????? or more specificallymany of their supporters??????

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24

St Andrew

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 07:53 PM

The club maybe in crisis but that is no excuse for a large section of the crowd to start singing sectarian songs. Rangers have been warned so many times about this and the SFA must take action, especially as it was also directed at the referee. But will the SFA have what it takes to do the right thing; or will it follow Mr Salmond's lead and consider leniency as they are a "Scottish Institution"?

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23

Hunky Dory

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 07:44 PM

After yesterday's illegal singing, it is unlikely that any modern thinking person would touch this lot with a barge pole, unless the barge owner is a sectarian bigot.

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22

Hunky Dory

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 07:41 PM

This club and their hate filled supporters should be wound up and confined to the sad part of Scotland's history.Once again, the Ibrox support showed us why they are a dispised group in Scottish society. Once again, Rangers football club were silent in their condemnation of hate filled anti Catholic bigotry.Will UEFA and the SFA be silent ? I hope not.

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21

Auld Meerkat

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 04:52 PM

Good article from Mr.Spiers. Rangers yesterday had a world wide audience to see how a good support can be valuable to a club and potential investors.Once again the 'loyal' fans blew it with their display of sectarian bile. Why should any public monies or taxes assist this degenerate outfit. There's something rotten in the state of Ibrox !

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20

Cromwell's Regret

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 12:31 PM

That's very true idee. Investors of the calibre rangers need have portfolios of business interests all over the shop...in retail, communications, energy, financial services....and in business these days, brand is everything. Who wants to be the guy in charge the next time they wreck a city ? Who wants to be the owner of a club with racism at the heart of its DNA ? Who on earth would wish to be associated with that ? Rangers are a proper disgrace. Yesterday was their so-called show of unity and all we heard from their fans was a nauseating stream of racist abuse. Would like to see whyte trying to flog this mob on dragon's den. You can imagine the panelists' enthusiasm when they're asked to part with around £100m to get their hands on a debt free institution which has stood for bigotry for around a hundred years.

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19

idee fixe

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 11:24 AM

When Sir David Murray went public and announced six (6) years ago that he wanted rid of Rangers F.C. I said at the time that he would find it very difficult to do that. ============ The main obstacle to getting rid of Rangers would be the Rangers fans themselves,I remarked at the time. ============ I was proven to have been spot on accurate though I take no pride in saying that today. ========== The reason I have mentioned this six (6) years later is that in their darkest hour Rangers fans are still exhibiting all those traits that made Rangers unsellable. ======== Unsellable to the point where Sir David Murray was forced to give the place away in order to be shot of it. ========= Rangers fans unlawful singing and illegal chanting yesterday at Ibrox show yet again that no one of substance will meaningfully invest in that club. ============= Sad. == Isn`t it.

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18

S0FBTRC

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 03:38 AM

Pending Moderation

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17

THE MASK

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 01:05 AM

WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW HUGELY DISAPOINTED I AM.THOSE ARE THE WORDS OF THE MAN HIMSELF."SIR DAVID MURRAY".And after all said an done he and he alone is without doubt responsible for the demise of a once great football club.I believe he recieved his knighthood for services to business if thats the case,Murray should be stripped of his knighthood forthwith.And along with whyte,should never be allowed to walk through the doors of ibrox again..

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16

Saltirescot

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 08:42 PM

Welll done Mr Spiers and it is no surprise you have been awarded journalist of the year on 5 occasions. Ian Archers description of Rangers FC as 'an occasional disgrace and permanent embarrassment' is as true today as it was when it was first penned 30 years ago

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15

MrsGratoli

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 03:47 AM

#5 - Rangers then, and, now, inflict damage on themselves. The sectarian policy of nearly seventy years should have been tackled by the authorities, any time from the 60's onward. They all (SFA, Local Councils, The Church of Scotland, National Governments and the Press) chose the coward's way out and sat on their hands. Yes, you are right, the signing policy has now changed, and is welcome, however the deep-rooted damage has been done. There are idiots on both sides of the divide, however only one club has practised institutionalised sectarianism year after year. Finally, I do not wish that Rangers goes out of business, even if it did it would return quickly; however I do expect that a just punishment is handed down - otherwise all other clubs will be seen as fools for obeying the law.

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14

TFC

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 03:16 AM

Robert Briggs .... good grief. What utter tosh. I think Mr Spiers has been spot on over the years and fair play to him as a Rangers fan for seeing the murray years for what they were. His description of standing on the terraces at Ibrox in the 70s resonates a lot. I think more than half of football fans these days cant relate to that but i can. Craig Whyte is a patsy in the same way as Oswald was. He has added to the damage for sure but the whole debacle should be laid at the feet of Murray. He has single handedly put Scottish football into the toilet. There really is no coming back from this now. Journalsts, Rangers fans, the government or whoever have been complicit in this fiasco for 25 years. 25 years of a club trying to corner a market through force resorting eventually to dodgy methods that have impacted the entire country through tax evasion. Their methods have been entirely unfair on the rest of the clubs and they have profitted from this. Their use of EBTs has given them a financial advantage over their competitors and they have gained subsequent advantages by securing a cash injection through being in the champions league to extend this whole cycle until now. Murray is behind this. Selling this for a pound may have added to it but the buck stops at him. Whyte has his own stuff to answer for but the damage to Scottish football is Murray's fault alone For fairness and sporting integrity the only solution is complete liquidation. Anything else renders the whole idea of Scottish football a joke. Tv deals here don't matter. Ben Johnson ran the 100m in 9.79secs. It doesn't count and no one now even considers it a relevant statistic anymore. This is what needs to happen to Rangers. Anything less and there is really no point in continuing the charade that is Scottish football.

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13

The Genuine Mario Antionette

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 01:22 AM

Employees of Rangers have received wages minus deductions for tax, NI etc. If these deductions have not been forwarded to HMRC, then these employees have all been victims of a fraudulent & criminal act - & it is time the Procurator Fiscal's department got off their backsides & started a criminal investigation into this aspect.

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12

The Genuine Mario Antionette

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 01:12 AM

The SFA are an absolute disgrace. A football club owner with-holds £9 million pounds from HMRC & they deem that kind of behaviour acceptable. In my view, the SFA are bringing the game into disrepute by refusing to declare whether or not Craig Whyte is a fit & proper person to run a football club.

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11

Arthur G

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 12:17 AM

Oh dear not content with sticking rigidly to a lickspittle pro-union anti SNP-indepndence line despite its obvious negative effect on circulation, The Scotsman now decides to employ Graham 'Destroyer of Rags' Spiers. The Scotsman really does have a death wish,

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