Inside new Rangers museum: Curios and oddities, Russian Lion, Frank Sinatra - well worth a visit

The new Rangers Museum, housed inside the revamped Edmiston House adjacent to Ibrox, contains all the usual things you would expect to find in such a creation.

The Rangers FC Club Museum at New Edmiston House.

It’s an impressive space bursting with memorabilia, strips, trophies and memories, a thoroughly comprehensive and well-packaged presentation of the club’s vast history. Videos of famous matches and old interviews sit next to the more traditional exhibits, while interactive touchscreen stations and a skills cage ought to help engage and entertain a younger audience with perhaps less patience for a considered history lesson.

As with many museums of this ilk, however, it is the curios and oddities that make it stand out. And there are more than a few here. A glass case commemorating “International Friendships” contains a colourful totem pole presented to the club by the Seattle Sounders during the 1976 tour of North America, that ornament situated below a giant boomerang gifted by the South Australian Soccer Federation the previous year. Across the room in another display case a striking leaf-motif vase handed over by Steaua Bucharest in 1987 immediately catches the eye.

The list of non-football guests to Ibrox over the years is an eclectic one, too. Visitors can learn about the 1905 heavyweight wrestling match between the Russian Lion, George Hackenschmidt and Govan’s Alex Munro, the time the great American jazz musician Louis Armstrong had fans chanting, “We want Satchmo!” and the 1990 Frank Sinatra concert that saw Ol’ Blue Eyes perform at the home of the Bluenoses.

Unlike some other club museums – including the one at Borussia Dortmund – there is little chronicling of the tougher times amid all the positivity. The only mention of Rangers’ financial implosion of the past decade comes via one of the videos that play repeatedly on a loop, the source of the words unclear as footage of a game from the lower divisions flashes briefly on screen. “In the bad times history is even more important because it shows how great you were,” reads the subtitles.

The museum is, naturally, aimed at Rangers supporters but would be well worth a visit for other football fans too.