Football's Most Precious Collection

If you've scored in the World Cup final, please also score at a game I can attend.

It’s a mouthful and it’s unachievable. Seeing live goals by players who’ve scored in the World Cup final is therefore unworthy of obsessive attention. Unless you’re a startlingly healthy 100-year-old millionaire, it’s not a doable list.

But, at half-time in the last match of the 2018 tournament, in Russia of all places, with France leading Croatia 2-1, a total of 57 different players had scored in the World Cup final. That this was the same as the number of Fabergé eggs in existence seemed particularly apt. And not just because those priceless ornaments were created for the Tsars by a craftsman of French heritage (President Putin watched from the executive seats as Antoine Griezmann became Scorer 57).

You can see a Fabergé egg but only the insanely rich get to own one. A goal in the World Cup final is every bit as beautiful and rare yet, while one country and one player will always claim them*, no-one can own what is essentially a fleeting physical action in time. And football, in one of its last democratic acts, can still allow us to experience World Cup final goals more viscerally than any bejeweled orb when we see the very same player score another goal in our presence.

So at full-time in the Brazil 2014 World Cup final I felt particularly denied. Three participants in the Argentina v Germany decider had scored in games I’d previously attended. Germany’s Mario Götze, who netted the only goal at the Maracana that night, wasn’t one of them. My personal collection was stuck at four. But then again they had all come to me - I'd seen them all in Glasgow.

In 1984, aged 15, I paid a fiver to watch Rangers host Internazionale in a UEFA Cup second round, second leg.  The decisive away goal came from Alessandro Altobelli. My teenage devastation later gave way to a feeling of vicarious involvement in the 1982 World Cup final, in which Altobelli scored Italy’s third against Germany.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge also starred for Inter that night. When he scored against Argentina in the next World Cup final I retrospectively regretted him only hitting the Ibrox post.

Thirty nine years on, just eight countries have won the World Cup. My love of Scotland matches anything any Argentinian or German feels for their national XI. Yet those two have met in the World Cup final three times since Rummenigge struck Rangers old square woodwork; It’ll now be at least 28 years since Scotland even qualified for the tournament. Part of me wants a bigger return on time invested. So I mainline the greats.

Hitting the back of the net in the planet’s most important game isn’t subjective greatness. It’s solid football gold. Seeing such a player score in the flesh is the closest you, I or even most citizens of those World Champion nations will get to FIFA’s showpiece match. 

Andres Iniesta’s first strike for Spain after his winner in the final of South Africa 2010 came in a Euro 2012 qualifier against Scotland. In Hampden’s Main Stand I held my breath when the ball rebounded to him 12 yards out. This wasn’t solely because Scotland were already one down. I was channeling Soccer City, Johannesburg and football’s biggest goal in four years.

It’s not all consolation though. Playing for Olympique Marseille, Rudi Völler scored at Ibrox in a July 1992 friendly. A relaxed home crowd applauded. I thrilled at witnessing a goal by the German who’d made it 2-2 in the Azteca in the Mexico 86 final. But five months later Völler returned, in the Champions League, putting Marseille 2-0 up. This was too much of a rare thing.

UEFA staged the 2002 Champions League final at Hampden. I breathed the same air as Zinedine Zidane’s spectacular winner for Real Madrid, mid-way between his two scoring World Cup finals. 

To augment this collection, however, it seemed I'd have to travel further afield on my treasure hunts.

Desperation to actually attend a World Cup, and the randomness of FIFA’s ticket ballot, found me at the opening game of Germany 2006. Philipp Lahm and Miroslav Klose scored against Costa Rica in Munich. The following year, in the Nou Camp, I saw Lionel Messi score against Rangers in the Champions League group stage. That in 2014 none of these three scored in the World Cup final was only as surprising as some of the 61 who have.

Italy’s Marco Materazzi (2006) and Germany’s Wolfgang Webber (1966) both managed just one other international goal in their playing careers. José Luis Brown’s only goal for Argentina was the opener in that 1986 final. Hector Castro, scorer of Uruguay's winner in the very first final, in 1930, was missing a right forearm.

And sometimes I’ve felt it would have been easier for me to actually score in the final than see live goals by those who have.

Fourteen months after his historic goal in Brazil, Götze showed up at Hampden for a Euro 2016 qualifier. Germany won 3-2 yet, rather than enjoy the consolation of him extending my collection, he had one chalked off for offside and another, which deflected off him into the net, credited to team-mate Thomas Müller.

By the time Rangers drew Borussia Dortmund in the 2021-22 Europa League – at Ibrox I watched the sides share four goals – Götze had left for PSV Eindhoven. When we drew PSV in the Champions League qualifiers six months later, again I attend an Ibrox leg ending 2-2, Götze had left for Eintracht Frankfurt... the side we’d lost to on penalties in the Europa League final in-between times. But I didn't attend that final so, you know, totally not bothered.

When Hampden was selected to host matches at Euro 2020 I successfully purchased a ticket for all four. The Covid afflicted tournament didn’t go ahead til 2021 and crowds in Glasgow were restricted to one quarter of the capacity; everyone had to return half their ticket allocation. Ivan Perišić, scorer of Croatia’s equaliser against France in the 2018 World Cup final, scored in two of these Hampden games. Yup, the two for which I was forced to return my ticket.

However the man who scored next that 2018 day in Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium, France’s Antoine Griezmann, had also scored versus David Moyes’ Real Sociedad when I saw them lose at Atletico’s old Vicente Calderón Stadium during an Easter 2015 holiday in Madrid. And, on 18 December 2022 as the world held its breath, wondering if Messi could negotiate extra time and penalties to finally land himself a World Cup winners’ medal, I already had what I’d sat on the sofa to see:

After 23 minutes of the 22^nd World Cup final, the man I’d witnessed scoring against my club in Barcelona 15 years earlier tucked away a penalty and gave me my Half Dozen. That he’d just become a highly paid ambassador of the murderous Saudi Arabian regime certainly took some of the shine off the moment.

And that day's infamously venal presentation ceremony itself, in a Qatar stadium which caused death and misery to those who built it, had me feeling just a little bit less like a blessed fan of a democratic game than an acolyte of one of those old Russian Tsars who bankrolled Peter Carl Fabergé, despots blythley letting people perish while coveting their little collection of diamond-encrusted eggs.

Football losing its lustre is a middle age thing, yes. But it’s also a realisation we’ve all been coming to for decades now. Eight countries own the World Cup and five own the players who reach its final. If you live outside the homes of those five richest European domestic leagues you might get to see those players in semi-retirement – as long as you reside in Japan, the USA or the gulf states - or watch them wipe the floor with your club in an early stage of the Champions League. 

But, just as it begins to feel like the "glittering jewelry" end of the game is not for the likes of you or me - the people who built it with love, adoration and a conviction it could genuinely illuminate our life - along comes the club I've adored the longest to offer this revolting peasant a flash of ultimate glamour:

An international weekend, of all things, leaves Rangers without a fixture this coming Saturday and Sunday. So, as has become the norm in such circumstances, a select side of "Rangers Legends" will play an "International XI" of equally retired and unfit greats of the global game on the very pitch where I saw my first ever World Cup final scorer score.

I wasn't interested initially. But then an e-mail arrived in my in-box listing both squads. I had to look. And the name that jumped out was one Emmanuel Petit, scorer of the clinching third goal in the 1998 World Cup final and frustratingly - for me - not on the score sheet when I saw him play for France in a 2000 friendly win v Scotland at Hampden. 

Would seeing this guy score, almost twenty years after he retired from playing, in a friendly for retirees, count towards my World Cup Scorers list? 

Not at £18.00 a ticket it won't. Thanks for nothing, Rangers. It'll be Easter soon - I'll use that cash for a deposit on a fancy egg.

*Or two countries and one player in the case of Croatia's Mario Mandžukić who scored for both sides in that 2018 final. Wikipedia claims, to date, that 62 players have scored in the World Cup final but this is only possible if "O.G." is a separate person from poor Mario. After the 2022 final, the total was 61 players.

A (very different) version of this article appeared on the When Saturday Comes website in September 2015.

Falling at the Half-Century Hurdle (2020-21 and 2021-22; The Lists)

 Every football match I’ve attended over the last two seasons.

Yeah, that’ll do me. With Armenia’s UEFA Nations League loss at Hampden, I think it’s time to say my match-going for 2021-22 is finished. I’ve seen all my in-the-flesh football for this season. Scotland’s return match in Yerevan will be TV viewing only for me, so the first season after the one where Covid completely closed the grounds ends with me having attended 48 games of football.

It ends with me knowing that, despite my early game-going zeal and a successful bid to complete a non-league bagging mission curtailed by the pandemic’s full UK arrival in March 2020 – a mission completed in November 2021 – I’ve fallen two short of attending 50 games.

Doesn’t matter if I could be attending pre-season games a couple of weeks from today – today being the first anniversary of my first post-lockdown game - 2021-22 will be the season I went to more games than usual but failed to hit a significant tally.

I’ve still managed my biggest total since 2007-08. And this season itself was not unaffected by Covid. Protocols from both the easing of restrictions last summer and the spike in cases around Christmas denied me access to a total of four matches for which I had already successfully purchased a ticket.

Even so, despite going over my average of the previous fourteen years – or, at least, the seasons within that time which weren’t ravaged by a global pandemic - staying in the forties demonstrates I haven’t gorged myself as much as the me of lockdown convinced myself I would. That guy deserved more.

That guy, forced to drive to Stirling and Dumbarton to walk round housing estates where grounds used to be, as some sort of methadone to the heroin of live football - that guy deserved 50 games this season. He needed the half-century, at least, to fulfil the promises he made to himself in those claustrophobic days of, at best, watching the game being played in empty grounds via some sort of screen.

Hey, I may be stretching it to include the delayed Euro 2020 finals in my games of “this season”. But I deserve the poetry of starting and finishing my 2021-22 match-going with two international games at Hampden (the second and second-last featuring wins by the news headlines’ Covid replacement, Ukraine). And, after seventeen months with zero live football, I definitely needed a season just six days shy of an entire year in length.

Completing the old SJFA West region was the minimum I needed to achieve in this campaign to feel as if the lockdown season had been avenged. As the notes in the list below demonstrate, I went into overkill on that one. I didn’t just do all the SJFA West grounds and bag all the remaining teams – I even ensured I’d seen every team at their home ground, making up for only having ever attended three of the grounds concerned when they were being used as neutral venues. It was overkill but that’s what this season was about. Covid stopped me completing the task before the SJFA West was subsumed into the West of Scotland League. If I was condemned to doing it retrospectively I was at least going to do it right.

My two most important lists, European Club Finalists and UEFA National Teams, remain incomplete but worked out a strange kind of compensation from the previous season. After missing the chance to bag Standard Liege and Royal Antwerp during the lockdown of 2020-21 – both these one-time European Cup Winners Cup runners-up played behind closed doors at Ibrox – I got two more names off my international list in the shape of Moldova and Armenia arriving at Hampden. In 2020-21 Scotland played no-one at home I hadn’t already seen in the flesh.

So, despite the annoyance of Rangers playing nine European home games and none of the opponents being a European finalist I hadn’t already bagged, enough revenge was had on that hellish closed-door season. All I lacked was a final total fully worthy of the term catharsis. Yet it feels I was always destined to fall two games short of the required number:

Covid crowd restrictions took my ticket off me for two Euro2020 finals matches at Hampden. I also missed two Rangers league games at Ibrox, covered by my season ticket, through temporary Covid protocols. And, at the end of the season, I missed two cup finals due to my own incompetence: I had failed to renew my passport so had zero chance of seeing Rangers unexpectedly competing in the Europa League final in Seville and, possibly more embarrassing, I had assumed the Scottish Junior Cup final took place on the first Sunday in June – a day on which I was required elsewhere – when in fact, I discovered on that very Sunday that Auchinleck had met Yoker on the first Saturday in June, a Saturday on which I had been doing S(J)FA.

Covid seems the main culprit but there’s little doubt my failure to reach 50, as well as my failure to get to Seville – where, let’s be honest, my chances of attaining a ticket for the final were limited - comes down to my recovery from another hangover of lockdown: I finally moved house.

A protracted sale of our old home in 2020, followed by the pandemic making it near impossible to buy a new one - all underscored by the ever-shrinking walls of our claustrophobically-decorated rented accomodation - resulted in a frenzied attack of house-hunting at the half-way point of this football season which in turn resulted in what will hopefully be the house I die in being sourced and bought and, as winter became spring, moved into with all the headaches and practicalities that involves, the first of which was to cut short my non-league ambitions at completing the SJFA West. Who the hell had time to apply for a new passport.

Then you combine all this with Rangers yet again displaying absolutely no shame when it comes to European progress of a rate none of us are frankly ready for having only yesterday watched us in the Third Division, League One and Challenge Cup finals. Who the hell has time to even look up what Lowland or Highland League match might be doable for you, far less attend the flippin’ thing, when you’ve just watched a four-goal epic with Borussia bloody Dortmund which would’ve graced the pages of Roy of the fekin Rovers or attended a European semi-final second leg which is, without doubtm the greatest footballing experience of a life which has gone two years over the half century?! There are reaction pods to be podded, delirious Tweets to be Tweeted and much drink to be drunk before you can even begin to process that level of delirium. By the time RB Leipzig had departed the pitch in front of me, I couldn’t even spell passport.

As much as anything, in 2021-22 I failed to reach 50 games because in 2021-22 actual football joy got in the way of the joy of merely going to the football.

I won’t complain.

2020-21 Season: Games what I attended in the flesh, like:

Big fat ZERO…

… coz Covid closed all the grounds (still had me an Ibrox season ticket though).

2021-22 Season: Games what I attended in the flesh, like:

* New Team (to me, i.e., first time I’m seeing them)
**New venue (ditto)

SCOTLAND 0 – 2 CZECH REPUBLIC (Hampden; UEFA Euro 2020 finals, Group D; Mon14/06/21)

SWEDEN 1 – 2 UKRAINE [After Extra Time] (Hampden; UEFA Euro 2020 finals, Last 16; Tue29/06/21)

Initially had tickets for all four of the Euro 2020 games scheduled to be played at Hampden but, with a combo of Covid, the Scottish Government and Uefa restricting the crowd numbers as the virus spiked again, Hampden was restricted to one-quarter capacity so everyone with tickets for Glasgow Euro 2020 matches was re-entered into a ballot and I was refunded for two of my four games, what became Croatia 1 – 1 Czech Republic and Croatia 3 – 1 Scotland, both in Group D.

However, this meant I still finally managed to see my country in a major finals, Patrick Schick’s Goal of the Tournament and also, with the subsequent Last 16 tie, I have now attended every stage of the Euros from qualifiers to final. But I did miss two goals by 2018 World Cup final scorer Ivan Perisic. Alex like live goals by World Cup final scorers. When Perisic scored v Czechi, Alex, sat on a sofa a 20 minute drive away, put foot through TV. 

July: Holidays and general uneasiness about a packed Ibrox for anything other than competitive football as Covid threatened a third wave - even with me now double-vaxed - saw me miss pre-season friendlies v Arsenal, Brighton and Real Madrid (Was at Bradford Bulls v Featherstone Rovers the day Rangers beat Real, getting Odsal off my General Sporting Arena Ambitions list): Early season crowd restrictions saw me – and thousands of other season ticket holders - denied access to Rangers opening day 3-0 SPFL Premiership home win over Livingston (raising of league flag delayed til September 19).

RANGERS 1 – 2 MALMO FF (Ibrox; UEFA Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round, 2nd leg; Tue10/08/21)

RANGERS 5 – 0 DUNFERMLINE ATHLETIC (Ibrox; Scottish League Cup 2nd round; Fri13/08/21)

CUMBERNAULD UNITED  1 – 0 HURLFORD UNITED (Guy’s Meadow**, Cumbernauld; West of Scotland League Premier Division; Sat14/08/21)

RANGERS 1 – 0 ALASHKERT* (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League Play-Off, 1^st leg; Thur19/08/21)

FORTH WANDERERS* 0 – 3 STIRLING UNIVERSITY* (Kingshill Park, Forth**; Friendly; Sat21/08/21)

ROYAL ALBERT* 0 – 4 ASHFIELD (Tileworks Park**; West of Scotland League Conference B; Sat28/08/21)

RANGERS 1 – 0 CELTIC (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun29/08/21)

SCOTLAND 1 – 0 MOLDOVA* (Hampden; 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifier; Sat04/09/21)

RANGERS 0 – 2 OLYMPIQUE LYONNAIS (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League Group A; Thur16/09/21)

EAST KILBRIDE THISTLE 2 – 1 KILSYTH RANGERS (The Showpark, East Kilbride**; West of Scotland League Conference C; Sat18/09/21)

RANGERS 1 – 1 MOTHERWELL (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun19/09/21)

RANGERS 2 – 0 LIVINGSTON (Ibrox; Scottish League Cup quarter-final; Wed22/09/21)

CLYDEBANK 0 – 1 KILWINNING RANGERS (Holm Park; West of Scotland League, Premier Division; Sat02/10/21) [Watched Yoker at Holm Park but my first time seeing Clydebank at home here, having previously seen them hosting at Glenhead Park and, if you like, Kilbowie.]

RANGERS 2 – 1 HIBERNIAN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun03/10/21)

[missed Scotland 3 -2 Israel in the World Cup qualifiers while on holiday in Kirkby Thore]

RANGERS 1 – 1 HEARTS (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sat16/10/21)

RANGERS 2 – 0 BRONDBY* (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League Group A; Thur21/10/21)

RANGERS 2 – 2 ABERDEEN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed27/10/21)

TROON FC 3 – 4 ADEER THISTLE (Portland Park; West of Scotland League Cup; Sat30/10/21) [first time seeing Troon at home – had previously seen Dalry Thistle v Winton Rovers at Portland Park]

KILWINNING RANGERS 4 – 1 ROSSVALE (Buffs Park**, Kilwinning Community Sports Club; West of Scotland League Premier Division; Sat06/11/21) [Had seen Kilwinning at their previous home, Abbey Park, many times]

RANGERS 4 – 2 ROSS COUNTY (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun07/11/21)

BELLSHILL ATHLETIC  0 – 6  ARTHURLIE (Rockburn Park**; West of Scotland League Conference A; Sat13/11/21) [have now attended every former SJFA West Region ground]

SCOTLAND 2 – 0 DENMARK (Hampden; 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifier; Mon15/11/21)

CAMBUSLANG RANGERS* 7 – 0 ARDEER THISTLE (Somervell Park; West of Scotland League Conference B; Sat20/11/21) [have now seen every former SJFA West Region club]

RANGERS 1 – 3 HIBERNIAN (Hampden; Scottish League Cup semi-final; Sun21/11/21)

RANGERS 2 – 0 SPARTA PRAGUE (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League Group A; Thur25/11/21)

ARDEER THISTLE 4 – 1 CARLUKE ROVERS (Ardeer Stadium; West of Scotland League Conference B; Sat27/11/21) [Have now seen every former SJFA West Region club playing at their home ground]

RANGERS 3 – 0 DUNDEE  (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sat04/12/21)

RANGERS 2 – 0 ST JOHNSTONE  (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed15/12/21)

RANGERS 1 – 0 DUNDEE UNITED  (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sat18/12/21)

[Miss the 2-0 Rangers home league win over St Mirren on Boxing Day – watch it on Rangers TV – because a spike in Covid figures sees the crowd restricted to just 500]

RANGERS 4 – 0 STIRLING ALBION (Ibrox; Scottish Cup Fourth Round; Fri21/01/22)

RANGERS 1 – 0 LIVINGSTON (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed26/01/22)

RANGERS 5 – 0 HEARTS (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun06/02/22)

RANGERS 2 – 0 HIBERNIAN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed09/02/22)

RANGERS 2 - 2 BORUSSIA DORTMUND (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, knockout round play-offs second leg; Thur 24/02/22)

RANGERS 2 - 2 MOTHERWELL (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun27/02/22)

RANGERS 1 - 0 ABERDEEN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sat05/03/22)

RANGERS 3 - 0 CRVENA ZVEZDA BEOGRAD (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, round of sixteen first leg, Thur10/03/22)

RANGERS 1 - 2 CELTIC (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun03/04/22)

RANGERS 3 – 1 SC BRAGA, AET (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, Quarter-final second leg, Thur14/04/22)

CELTIC 1 – 2 RANGERS, AET (Hampden; Scottish Cup, Semi-final, Sun17/04/22)
Media Area/Press pass

RANGERS 3 – 1 RB LEIPZIG* (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, Semi-final second leg, Thur05/05/22)

RANGERS 2 – 0 DUNDEE UNITED (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun08/05/22)

RANGERS 4 – 1 ROSS COUNTY (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed11/05/22)

RANGERS 2 – 0 HEARTS, AET (Hampden; Scottish Cup final, Sat21/05/22)

SCOTLAND 1 – 3 UKRAINE (Hampden; 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers second round, Path A semi-final; Wed01/06/22)

SCOTLAND 2 – 0 ARMENIA* (Hampden; Uefa Nations League, Group B1; Wed08/06/22)

SUB TOTALS:

[Rangers: 32]

Europe: 9
League: 17
Scottish Cup: 3
League Cup: 3

[Scotland: 5]

UEFA Euro 2020 finals, Group Stage: 1
Fifa 2022 World Cup qualifying 2
Fifa 2022 World Cup play-off semi-final: 1
UEFA Nations League: 1

[Miscellaneous: 11]

UEFA Euro 2020 finals, Round of 16: 1
West of Scotland League: 8
West of Scotland League Cup: 1
Scottish non-league friendlies: 1

TOTAL: 48

Venues: Ibrox x 29, Hampden x 9, Guy’s Meadow, Kingshill Park, Tileworks Park, The Showpark, Holm Park, Portland Park, Buffs Park, Rockburn Park, Somervell Park, Ardeer Stadium.

Return Ticket

 

Walking across a rubble-strewn wasteland, a no man’s land – a dead area short-cut between the buzz and buildings around the island of Bridge Street subway station carpark and the shiny brick, smooth pointing and warm welcome of the new-build flats and townhouses of the Gorbals – and my pace is hindered, as I climb a scrambler-friendly tufted incline of mud, by a buzz on the phone in my jeans pocket.

Robert’s just seen the photo. I’m five minutes from his house but he’s texting now to know if I’ve seen it too.

A season of horrible government statistics off the field ameliorated, for the chosen few, by gorgeous stats on it. And now, on the day of the final game – on the day when champions will be crowned but records will be lost or set – fate has reminded four of us who are meeting up again today for the first time in too long, of a specific time, date and moment in which we were all drinking to avoid an inevitable calamity.

Well, when I say “fate” reminded us …

“Check your Facebook memories for today.”

I already had. First thing that very morning Facebook had notified me of what I both looked like and was up to, nine years ago. I was going to wait til I got to Robert’s before I mentioned it to him and the girls. I have a penchant for coincidences which others don’t always share – which I can take too far - so I was glad it had gripped him too.

We can’t have posted the photo quickly enough nine years previously. Given my own levels of technophobia, there’s a chance I was still using those huge late-1980s yuppie brick phones on the day of Rangers last home game of 2011-12. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t posted instantly on social media: The photo of us four, plus a German, taken group selfie-style by Robert in the branch of the Louden Tavern formerly known as the Stadium Bar, during our traditional Last Home Game of the Season session, after the 0-0 with Motherwell on 5 May 2012, hadn’t gone up onto the platform until the 15^th.

Now, today, with the last digits of that year reversed, Rangers last home game of this very different season would see us all meet up again.  Facebook Memories indeed. May 15, 2009 we wondered if we’d ever see our club again. May 15, 2021 we were just beginning to see our friends, our families –anyone – again.

My only “partying” of the last fourteen months had been sitting in our front garden on a little deck chair I tucked into the corner between the hedge and the front of our house, tunes on the headphones, sinking a can or two of something like Kronenbourg 1664, looking at the space and light – and the space, so much space – amid the clouds above.

Once or twice I’d had a whisky in the house but lockdown took a hold of both me and the bottle, at an angle which made pouring – into glass and down throat – frighteningly easy. What had sustained me in a healthy fashion was Rangers. That is, Rangers just never, ever, losing. I don’t know how non-Rangers fans coped but to watch my team embark, in this hardest of times, on its greatest league campaign since Queen Victoria was on the throne, created a sanity-saving equilibrium. It was as if the hellish unreality of everyday life was being balanced out by the heavenly unreality of football life.

That the stadiums were empty. as I watched us live on laptop or telly, became strangely, perfectly apt. It provided an aesthetic and a soundtrack that somehow joined it all up to make its own sense. Two clanging outliers – attendances and Rangers form - balanced each other by both acknowledging and averring that life wasn’t normal but that football was indeed operating in that abnormality.

Football’s always been its own self-contained world. That it was now more so felt right for Rangers too. We’d gone under in financial chaos and now, amid global chaos, my club fully emerged again, flowering more beautifully than ever.

Today we’d celebrate this season and that achievement and the beginning of the end of the abnormality.

I hit the big Co-op. San Miguels or Kronenbourg for the main supply but also a wee bottle of whisky for the hosts and, as I traipsed round the low-lit aisles, inspiration hit as coincidentally as Facebook Memories earlier that morning:  A four-pack of a McEwan’s lager I had never seen before.

The association of the brand with the Rangers shirt may have aided the choice, but the 7.3% proof was as much a reason not to buy it. But what truly got it in the basket was the name of this particular product – McEwan’s Champion. That it came in packs of four, with the German long returned to Germany, made it all the more perfect. We were not train station alcoholics in need of super lager – but we were champions, and that needed celebrating.

Robert had the strip on as he came to the door. He had the laptop rigged up and the tables and chairs in his drive and the studio wired for sound, with the windows open to let it all flood out.

We’d all had our first jab. I had mine the previous Friday and felt flattened for half a day. Slept through most of it. It was worth it. The best medicine lets you know it’s working on you by giving you a taste of what you’re being saved from, and this was medicine a fat man in his fifties needed in the spring of 2021.

We’d scored before the girls even arrived. Of course we did. This is what Rangers did this season. It was all magic. It was 2-0 just after the half hour – as if Rangers were letting the girls arrive and giving us enough time to say hello like people who hadn’t seen each other all season before they distracted us again with more goals.  They saved the next two for the second half so Robert’s partner could arrive back in their place at half-time and we could rant to her like over-excited school kids trying to explain to a very patient adult why exactly we were all so over-excited and at no point did she ever say, “Look, I’ve been hearing this all year from him. Gie’s peace”. That takes class.

And so, as the cans got sunk and the dull sky lifted into nascent sunshine and the girls’ wee dog hid from Robert’s big cat, we went into the second half knowing the 100 points mark would be breached and all that remained was for us to keep a clean sheet for that all-time British defensive record.

Aberdeen proceeded to miss goals as open as those Livingston had fluffed on Wednesday when, again, just one goal conceded would have taken it away. But it wasn’t going away. The magic wasn’t going to be lost now. This season would forever be preserved in a particularly decadent frame of sumptuous invincibility.

Steven Gerrard was the hope – he was the vaccine. Our first jab was Europe, our second was turning the Old Firm games in our favour and the third was making us champions of Scotland again. Unpleasant side-effects? Oh aye, we’d had plenty of them over the course of our treatment, from missing a penalty to lose the 2019 League Cup final to an offside goal and ten Celtic players, to losing at home to Hamilton Accies in the last league game any of us had attended.

And, even now, as League Title No. 55 confirmed Rangers immunity was completely rebuilt, we still had visiting goalkeepers forcing a penalty shoot-out in the 122^nd minute of a Scottish Cup exit to ensure we were in absolutely zero doubt this medicine was properly kicking in.

But when Professor Chris Whitty confirms Covid is over, that life can return to normal, it will only be the day you know you’re free again; it won’t be the day you feel it. You can celebrate the end of the contagion. And we will. But there will be another day when you properly realise, a day in the future when the return of the old life, made all the sweeter for how close we came to losing it, fully kicks in.

My emotions were all over the place from the moment I’d got on the underground. Half the Rangers support was off to George Square to watch the game on devices and celebrate in the city centre. One guy in plaster cast, Castore and crutches refused to take my seat but gladly explained to the train how he’d done his ankle in falling off a bench in March, at the title-winning celebrations. He was headed back for more.

Me? I wept like a wean when seeing the scenes filmed from Steven Gerarrd’s car as he approached Ibrox the day before Celtic officially handed us the league title. But I’d stayed away from crowds. I’d celebrated with my wife. I’d drunk a lot on my own that Sunday evening into that Monday morning in early March. So now, in mid-May, stepping onto a tube carriage full of blue jerseys and celebratory lyrics, was my first properly normal match day experience since Bayer Leverkusen turned up in Govan 14 months earlier.

A normal Ibrox match day experience which ended without me having been anywhere near our stadium.

But, with friends and beer, I watched Rangers doing that thing which brought it all home.  Roofe made it 3-0 on the hour, Jermain Defoe made it 4-0 with four minutes left and there was no way Aberdeen were ever going to score because this game was flying past in a rocket ship that had been building up speed since that last home game of 2011-12. Rangers were back, yeah. Rangers were champions again, definitely. But now a new record had been set. Even that we were out the Scottish Cup ensured there were no games left to threaten the magical end to this magical season.

Unbeaten. An entire league season unbeaten. Fewer goals conceded than any other club in the history of top flight British league football.  And all these stats became the flourish which took it beyond mere stats. We’d known since March things would never again be as bad as they had been over the last nine years. At full-time on Saturday 15 May we knew things could be even better than they’d been before that.

We’d had the jag, now the doctor had given us our lollipop. All better.

All across the world, any let up in the pandemic had allowed people to see loved ones again. The grandparents were reunited with the grandkids and the rush of joy was too much, the surfeit of emotion overwhelming. I knew we were champions. I’d drunk to it and talked and podded and Tweeted and cheered and blogged about it for two months. We’d been champions for two whole months already. We had the glory - anything else was magic.

And then the question we’d been laughingly putting to each other all day “Who’s presenting the trophy (Coz we know it won’t be the SPFL)?” was answered in a way I’ll never forget.

We knew our captain was lifting it. James Tavernier was waiting by the hastily constructed podium on the pitch. But when the cameras cut to the mouth of the Ibrox tunnel and the Premiership trophy was being carried out by John Greig… by the bricks and mortar of Ibrox made flesh, by the pounding heartbeat of Rangers entire history – by the man whose dedication my aunt and uncle would cite when trying to get me to go to bed when they babysat me in the 1970s (“John Greig is in his bed by 9 O’Clock every Friday!”) … yeah, that was too much for me. That was magic multiplied. That was something beyond stardust. That was a lineage going straight back to William Wilton, our first ever manager – the man who employed Struth; Struth who signed Waddell; Waddell who managed Greig; Greig who was now about to honour Tavernier:

 If John Greig’s in the stadium, every bluenose is in the stadium. The Greatest Ever Ranger was carrying Rangers’ greatest ever league title. Friends were reunited. All had been made whole again.

For the full-time whistle and for the lifting of the trophy, Robert had poured us all a whisky. We needed it. 

The coverage from Ibrox ended. The real socialising began. Robert showed me the Tinie Tempah video for “Glorious 55^th”. I’d had no idea about this but it just seemed to fit in perfectly. We sat in the sun that was never too sunny and the grey that never turned to rain and other nice friends of Robert arrived by bike and by foot and neighbours stopped for a beer and a chat and crisps were opened and I got one white cat confused with another and the beer was paced easy and the whisky was kept occasional and the tunes… oh, the tunes: The host knows more about music than most – hell, he is music – and the set list for the day, lilting out his studio window, had been curated to perfection. From Marley’s “Three Little Birds” to a beautiful piano solo I didn’t recognise – it was Robert. It was a recording of himself playing. Amazing. A tune by who, I asked. By Robert. He’d written the thing too – everything and everyone just floated in a balm of harmonic perfection, wondrous relief and joy absorbed through pores into souls.

We toasted with the 7.3% beer of Champions. We asked a lovely St Mirren fan to stand in for the long-gone German and we retook the photo from the last home game of 2012. Facebook Memories aligned and balanced with Facebook Now.

I only left because I knew I would stay all night and because I wanted to see my wife before I wasn’t worth seeing.

I didn’t take the wasteland short cut. I can’t even remember the Subway ride. But I bet the SPFL Championship trophy didn’t feel as beautiful in the arms of James Tavernier as the hamburger supper with gravy and two pickled onions I collected betwixt Subway and home felt in my hands, on my lips, in my gut.

A long, uphill walk past kerbside diners only happy to be socialising again; the sun setting behind the roof of the houses opposite ours. I quickly grabbed the wee deckchair and sat it on its far too usual garden spot and took the last few Kronenbourgs from the fridge, sank them in the fresh air as the street went dark. The tunes were all about Rangers, even when they weren’t.

I know she’ll have asked me “How was the game?” I hope I said “Champion.”

She definitely asked me how my day was. I hope I said it was Simply The Best.

Because it was.

Sir Walter

 The day after Walter died Aberdeen came back to Ibrox and got those two goals – the two goals and the one point they needed on the last day of 1990-91 - as if to say, imagine what would have happened without him.

A week after the cortege was besieged with love on Edmiston Drive, Steven Gerrard left Rangers. We all wanted his assistant, Michael Beale, to take over. Because when a European Cup-winning former Liverpool captain ends a decade of hurt at Ibrox it should lead to his assistant becoming the most successful manager in our modern history. That’s what Walter taught us.

And when Giovanni van Bronckhorst agreed to become our seventeenth permanent manager, red tape around work permits meant, on the day of Walter’s memorial service at Glasgow Cathedral, that room with that phone at the top of that marble staircase was as metaphorically empty as the manager’s office at Auchenhowie. And that’s as should be. Because, unless you remember Struth and Waddell, there is only one manager of our club:

It still leaves them plenty of room to be successful, but any successor is destined to fall a long way short of Walter Smith.

You don’t call him “Smith”. You want to question his tactics – even his ability – that’s fine. Go on; make a fool of yourself. But you will call him Walter or Mr. Smith – anything else is just downright disrespectful.

…is what I meant to say, boldly, staunchly: like a man wearing brown brogues. What actually came out was something more like “Stop calling him Smith! Stop spitting out his name like that!”, in a kind of whinny descending into a mew, followed by a lot of mumbles about Walter’s managerial statistics, as I turned back round and re-aimed my faltering glare at the brown Adidas Frankfurts already ten years too young for me and responsible for a future bunion, having realised the younger dude who sat behind me could probably hospitalise me without breaking sweat.

I don’t get into arguments, far less physical fights, at the football. Especially not with fellow Rangers fans. But during our last home league game of 2008-09, against Aberdeen, with yet another Old Firm title race destined to go to the final day, a fellow season ticket holder went too far. He wasn’t happy that we weren’t winning. Go figure. But he was particularly unhappy with what our manager was doing about it.

Yet nowhere near as unhappy as I was with how he was expressing that dissatisfaction.

Amazingly, he saw my point. We debated the tactics more calmly and Rangers won the match. We became pals after that and, without even knowing it, even if it was just an interpersonal one in the stands, Walter Smith had yet again resolved a potential Ibrox crisis.

This grizzly bear cub probably didn’t remember our Nine-In-A-Row as clearly as me. The three straight top flight title wins which began the following week did more to educate the young fellah on Walter Smith’s ability than I ever could.

But when I was at it again two weeks later, I knew my real point was about gratitude and affection – two things often in suicidally short supply among large segments of the Rangers support, and two things Walter Smith deserves more of than any other Ranger I remember.

Hampden this time: The Scottish Cup final. We’re 1-0 up on Falkirk with two minutes left and Northern Irish striker Kyle Lafferty is brought on for Scottish utility man Christian Dailly, leaving scorer Nacho Novo the only recognised Rangers striker on the pitch:

Guy in Rangers top, three rows from the back of the North Stand: “Christian Dailly?! To play up front?? What the fu** are ye doin’, Smith??!!”

Me, in the back row of the North Stand: “He scored a hat-trick on his debut for Dundee United”

(Turning round) “Whit?”

(Making eye contact) “Dailly started his career as a striker at Dundee United”

“Aye, but that was a hundred years ago!”

“Aye, but we won the league six days ago.”

An animated shrug of contempt in front of me, but End of Conversation.
 
I’m not even sure my hat-trick stat was correct. However, my new-found brevity of expression came not just from the fact this guy was almost as old and fat as me (and one of those “complaining makes you cleverer” tourists – he and his pal left before the trophy presentation) but because I knew sealing the SPL title with the previous Sunday’s Tannadice thrashing of Dundee United – confirmed by Kris Boyd becoming our ninth and final player to touch the ball when he converted a length-and-width-of-the-pitch move – demanded far more respect than this chap had afforded our manager over the previous 88 minutes.

And I was confident I’d be backed up by the majority of a crowd who now knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, Walter was back – and even better than before.

In many ways I was shouting at myself. Perhaps these rare moments of me calling stuff out were pure Lady Macbeth, protesting too much - simply covering up my own, historic lack of faith in the man. Maybe I felt criticisms of Walter Smith more keenly because I too had needed telling. I’d required some re-education when Walter took over - three times:

I’m a xenophile. Not as bad as a xenophobe but with a lot of the same patronising, generalising ignorance involved. Walter put me right, in terms of both club and country, when it came to my belief foreign must always be better. Berti Vogts won a World Cup with Germany as a player and the Euros as a manager. Surely he was exactly what Scotland needed.

Berti’s first game was a 0-5 friendly embarrassment in Paris. His competitive reign started with us lucky to be only 2-0 down to the Faroes at half-time. Walter Smith came in to save the day and soon had Kenny Miller scoring with a header against the defence of Cannavaro and Nesta, in the qualifiers for a World Cup Italy would go on to win. (This was also just one reason why no Rangers fan should have been singing about sticking Miller up any kind of arse when Walter mooted re-signing the striker for Rangers in the summer of 2008. What he went on to achieve in his second spell for the club shoved every negative opinion of Miller up more back ends than ever parked in the bucket seats of Ibrox. Yet more proof that Walter, declared hater of the “We Deserve Better stuff”, always knew what was best for us).

The France team Italy would defeat on penalties in the 2006 World Cup final? The France who’d taunted Scotland in Vogts’ first game in charge? Walter’s Scotland beat them at Hampden in the next qualifying campaign, for Euro 2008. The Trezeguet-Henry-Ribery onslaught on our goal, as I stood near the front row of the West Stand that day, was relentless, frightening and World Class. But so too was the belief Walter instilled in his teams:

Scotland one, France nil.

When Walter took over from Graeme Souness at Ibrox in 1991 I was unenthused, my head turned by the glistering array of foreign and English stars arriving under our high-profile, Nietzsche-moustachioed, suntanned and permed, signed-from-Serie A, psychopathic-tackling gaffer. Walter had worked under Jim McLean, taking Dundee United to within a cheating referee of facing Graeme Souness in his last European Cup final as a player. Walter’s aggression was, like his hair and good looks, more natural, honed and focussed.

He took Nine-in-a-Row away from Celtic as a record, took the fight for ten to the wire and was a better-squared Pieter Huistra pass in the Stade Velodrome from taking us to the very first Champions League final. Walter beat the champions of England home and away. He engendered an esprit de corps in that 1992-93 squad, in that 44-game unbeaten, treble-winning run, that left us all knowing Rangers would have dealt with Milan in that Munich final in exactly the same way as eventual champions Marseille who, despite bribing their way to the top, couldn’t beat Walter’s Rangers in two attempts.

Walter made so many Rangers dreams come true in his first stint as Rangers gaffer that it made me too protective of him.

When he returned to Ibrox in January 2007 I declared we’d win the league again but Europe would be a bust. Walter’s latter Champions League campaigns of his first Rangers tenure had seen us ship a lot of goals and gain very few points. The man he now replaced, Paul le Guen, had made us the first Scottish side – club or national – to win on Italian soil. Le Guen had become the first Rangers manager to qualify us from a UEFA group stage with a game to spare.

It didn’t matter that the Italian side was lowly Livorno or the competition the UEFA Cup, I was more than happy to lose a league title if it meant such improvement in Europe. If we could win on the continent, the domestic stuff would surely follow (as I say, xenophile – big, fat, toxic xenophile).

Getting Walter in again was surely a sign Rangers were literally going backwards and, apart from anything else, I didn’t want him to spoil his phenomenal 1990s domestic legacy with an unsuccessful second coming:

Eight domestic trophies in four full seasons, including three straight league titles. Oh and - just in case I wasn’t getting the picture - Rangers only European final of the last fifty years; All done on an ever-decreasing budget. Walter made dreams come true, because he knew how to deal with reality.



In his eleven full seasons in sole charge, Walter Smith did not once field a Rangers side that couldn’t win the league. Please be sure you understand what I mean here. I’m not claiming that, in my personal opinion, the quality of his squad meant he had no excuses for finishing second to Celtic in 1997-98 and 2007-2008. No. What I mean is he only ever actually lost a league title race on the final day of the season. When he took over from Le Guen, half-way through a season, he got us through another round in Europe and, with us already out all the domestic competitions, he beat Celtic home and away in the remaining Old Firm fixtures.

For this alone he deserved at least the longest, happiest retirement of any Rangers hero. Knighted or not, to us he will always be Sir Walter. And when I say he should have been our Sir Matt Busby I mean he should have been the face in the directors box which, for at least another decade, the cameras pick out during a pause in any particularly - we’ll never forget all those interviews dotted with “particularly” – meaningful match at Ibrox.

It’s the role his former adversary and one-time boss, Sir Alex Ferguson now fulfills for lazy directors of outside broadcasting units. But I can’t use Ferguson as my example of resting legend as reassuring touchstone because Sir Alex is the very example of what Sir Walter was not - of why I loved the latter so much. Ferguson, on paper, is the greatest Scottish manager of all-time. But, for me, he lacks class.

As when Jurgen Klopp needed to walk away from a live video link interview the night Liverpool won their first league title in 30 years, to prove he was crying – in case we didn’t get that he was crying and therefore emotional and therefore a real, proper legend – those managers who engender the cult of personality, always magnanimous in victory and cheated in defeat, don’t deserve to sit on the same pedestal as Walter.

Minutes after we lost 4-1 at St Johnstone one midweek, an eager BBC Sportsound reporter asked what would have happened if he’d made earlier substitutions.

“We’d have lost 4-2”.

 Sir Alex Ferguson, ahead of a Rangers Champions League game at Old Trafford, quipped with an interviewer that he remembered Walter kicking him during Glasgow schools football: The reporter then put this to Walter who merely stated he didn’t know how that was possible when Sir Alex was at least six years older than him.

His Rangers team, worth about a 100^th of Manchester United’s, took a point back up to Govan.

But it wasn’t just the self-deprecation and the cheeky one-liners. Walter found what Hollywood scriptwriters call the third way when asked, on Radio Scotland, about the referee’s strike of 2010. Instead of laying into Celtic manager Neil Lennon, whose deliberately paranoid rantings had sunk Scottish football to one of its lowest ever moments, Walter simply stated, of the referees, “They haven’t said why they’re striking. I don’t even know why they’re going on strike,” with an air of simply having to get on with things despite his puzzlement.

But what Walter was doing was delineating this as an argument between Celtic and referees. Rangers would keep their powder dry. We wouldn’t do the refs’ publicity for them. We saw how Walter later pulled Ally McCoist away from Lennon in the aftermath of the 2011 Scottish Cup replay at Parkhead – like a hardy auld dad telling an over–enthusiastic son that the annoying wee nyaff at the wedding do genuinely isn’t worth it. He knew the treacherous Old Firm landscape like few others and how to navigate it without losing your soul.

Peter Lawwell’s Celtic had zero qualms about manipulating competitions through skulduggery. Walter, our front line amid the “sporting integrity” off-field onslaught of 2007-08, was telling the refs they had to stand up and fight properly, stand their own ground. For him that was how you ensured, no matter the result, you kept your dignity.



Every time I drive through the Clyde Tunnel from south to north I have a Proustian recollection of the anguish of Radio Scotland yet again somehow managing to go to post-match interview with Walter Smith precisely as I hit the airwaves-free zone of the car tube under the Clyde. This pained me so much because, good news or bad, no-one told it better than Walter.  

I must have had better timing when it was the great man himself who first confirmed our forthcoming financial troubles, while also taking the heat off the players after a 1-1 Ibrox draw with Hibernian, in October 2009. We won that league title - and the next one – with a support who now knew exactly what miracles his team were performing.

It wasn’t just the trophies. It wasn’t just the glory. It was the class. It was the honesty. It was the integrity. Benchmark? Walter Smith was the blue ribbon, the gold standard – as a manager, yes – but firstly as an exemplar of the very best humanity has to offer. He’d have a stand-up physical fight with anyone – including the downright massive Hibs manager Mixu Paatelainen one sleepy Scottish Cup Sunday in Govan – but he never goaded anyone on or off the field. Nor did he use the media to engage opponents in what we used to call mind-games but we now know as gas-lighting.

And, if you think there’s too much dangerous, delusional deification going on here, you only have to think of a beloved grandparent to get what I really mean.

Walter Smith was only twenty years older than me but when Brian Laudrup opened the scoring during the 1996 Scottish Cup final and my sister and I, in the suited and polite corporate section of the old Hampden Main Stand thanks to two complimentaries from her job, went utterly ballistic, leaped into the air instantly hugging as you always do when Brian Laudrup scores, and turned to the directors box behind us to see only one other person going utterly ballistic in our immediate eye line of double-breasters and ties and nice coats, he saw us because, hell, we were the only other people on our feet between him and the pitch, and we screamed his Christian name at him and he winked at us and my sister and I, both well into our twenties, turned to each other and screamed, “Walter winked at us! Walter winked at us!” as we began our celebrations again like a pair of toddlers running up the path to a grandpa we utterly adored and will forever be besotted with.

Walter winked at us and it meant more than that famous game, that cup being lifted or many other things that happened to me in my life as a Rangers fan. Or in my life full stop.

He’s one of the few men to teach Ronaldo humility and make Messi fume. The Hearts players of the Scottish Cup final two years later, taking a present of a crate of Champagne for the bus back along the M8 after their famous victory at Parkhead, will tell you he’s one of the football people who take as much credit for how he lost as how he won. He was a pillar of integrity and intellect at modern Ibrox. As the French said when Sartre died, who will tell us how to think now?

Walter winked at us all and it felt as much of a bloody privilege to have him in our lives as it felt like a warm embrace and arriving at the hearth of a welcoming homestead. Walter just made you feel safe.

We have every reason in the world to deify and admire and respect Walter Smith – some had plenty reason to fear him. But what’s left behind on his passing is just pure affection – total, unambiguous, heart-felt love.

Rest easy, Sir Walter. Thank you for everything.

2018-19: The List

Following hot on the heels of my summer smash, 2019-20, comes the prequel, Games I Attended the Previous Season (complete with a major revelation about my Junior games quota that campaign): 

On holiday and/or disinterested for pre-season home friendlies v Bury and Wigan – seen both clubs before.

RANGERS 1 – 0 SHKUPI (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, 1st Qualifying Round, 1st leg, Thur12/07/18)

RANGERS 1 – 1 OSIJEK (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, 2nd Qualifying Round, 2nd leg, Thur02/08/18)

RANGERS 3 – 1 MARIBOR (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, 3rd Qualifying Round, 1st leg, Thur09/08/18)

RANGERS 2 – 0 ST MIRREN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun12/08/18)

RANGERS 1 – 0 UFA (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, Play-off, 1st leg, Thur23/08/18)

SCOTLAND 0 – 4 BELGIUM (Hampden; International Challenge Match, Fri07/09/18)

SCOTLAND 2 – 0 ALBANIA (Hampden; UEFA Nations League C, group 1; Mon10/09/18)

RANGERS 4 – 0 DUNDEE (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sat15/09/18)

RANGERS 5 – 1 ST JOHNSTONE (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun23/09/18)

RANGERS 4 – 0 AYR UNITED (Ibrox; Scottish League Cup quarter-final, Wed26/09/18)

RANGERS 3 – 1 RAPID WIEN (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, Group Stage, Thur04/10/18)

RANGERS 3 – 1 HEARTS (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun07/10/18)

MOTHERWELL COLTS (Under-21s) 2 – 0 SLIGO ROVERS (Fir Park; Scottish Challenge Cup, Third Round, Sat13/10/18)

SCOTLAND 1 – 3 PORTUGAL (Hampden; International Challenge Match, Sun14/10/18 [Lower South Stand with my nephew])

RANGERS 0 – 0 SPARTAK MOSCOW (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, Group Stage, Thur25/10/18)

ABERDEEN 1 – 0 RANGERS (Hampden; Scottish League Cup semi-final, Sun28/10/18)

RANGERS 1 – 1 KILMARNOCK (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Wed31/10/18)

RANGERS 7 – 1 MOTHERWELL (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun11/11/18)

QUEEN’S PARK 1 – 2 CONNAH’S QUAY NOMADS (Hampden; Scottish Challenge Cup, quarter-final, Fri16/11/18)

SCOTLAND 3 – 2 ISRAEL (Hampden; UEFA Nations League C, group 1; Tue20/11/18)

RANGERS 3 – 0 LIVINGSTON (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sat24/11/18)

RANGERS 0 – 0 VILLARREAL (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, Group Stage, Thur29/11/18)

ALBION ROVERS 1 – 1 COWDENBEATH (Cliftonhill; SPFL League 2, Sat01/12/18)

RANGERS 0 – 1 ABERDEEN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Wed05/12/18)

RANGERS 1 – 0 HAMILTON ACADEMICAL (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun16/12/18)

RANGERS 1 – 1 HIBERNIAN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Wed26/12/18)

RANGERS 1 – 0 CELTIC (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sat29/12/18)

RANGERS 4 – 0 ST MIRREN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sat02/02/19)

RANGERS 0 – 0 ST JOHNSTONE (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sat16/02/19)

RANGERS 5 – 0 KILMARNOCK (Ibrox; Scottish Cup Fifth Round Replay, Wed20/02/19)

RANGERS 4 – 0 DUNDEE (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Wed27/02/19)

RANGERS 0 – 2 ABERDEEN (Ibrox; Scottish Cup Quarter-final Replay, Tue12/03/19)

RANGERS 1 – 1 KILMARNOCK (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sat16/03/19)

RANGERS 3 – 0 HEARTS (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Wed03/04/19)

NEWMAINS UNITED 3 – 3 MUIRKIRK JUNIORS (Victoria Park; SJFA West Region League Two, Sat13/04/19)

PRESTON NORTH END 4 – 0 IPSWICH TOWN (Deepdale; EFL Championship, Sat20/04/19)

RANGERS 2 – 0 ABERDEEN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun28/04/19)

RANGERS 1 – 0 HIBERNIAN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun05/05/19)

RANGERS 2 – 0 CELTIC (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership, Sun12/05/19)

SCOTLAND WOMEN 3 – 2 JAMAICA WOMEN (Hampden, friendly, Tue28/05/19)

SCOTLAND 2 – 1 CYPRUS (Hampden, Euro 2020 qualifier, Sat 08/06/19)

SUB TOTALS:

Rangers: 30
Europe: 7
League: 19
Scottish Cup: 2
League Cup: 2

Scotland MNT: 5
UEFA Euro 2020 qualifiers: 1
UEFA Nations League group games: 2
Friendlies: 2

Scotland WNT:1
Friendlies: 1

Miscellaneous: 5
Junior club fixtures: 1
Scottish League 2: 1
English Championship: 1
Scottish Challenge Cup: 2

TOTAL: 41

Venues: Ibrox x 29, Hampden x 8, Fir Park, Cliftonhill, Deepdale, Victoria Park (Newmains).

Let Me Count the Ways (2019-20; The List)

Pfizer and AstraZeneca aren't the only life-saving shots in the arm. But, when it comes to attending football matches, a double vaccination has never been enough for some.

On Saturday night, at Hampden Park, the National Stadium, I attend my tenth game of the season. Or, should I say, my tenth game since vaccination, reduced crowds and mask-wearing allowed us to start hitting the football grounds again.

Not saying I missed the sport during the last season of closed grounds but, since the Scottish turnstiles began moving again this summer, I've attended two matches at the delayed Euro 2020, an SPFL Premiership game, a Scottish League Cup match, a Champions League qualifier, a Europa League play-off, two West of Scotland League matches and a Saturday 3pm friendly, arranged on the Friday night, between Forth Wanderers of that West of Scotland League, Conference A, and Stirling University of the Lowland League.

I even went down to Bradford for my first ever Rugby League match.

Had it not been for this burst of ground-attending, the ankle I somehow managed to damage in a twist as cruel as a sprain afflicting my physical movement just as a pandemic loosened its hold on my leisure time, would probably have cleared up by now.

More annoying, the sprain prevented me achieving ten (soccer) matches before September. A Monday night non-league game, between Saturday and Wednesday outings, couldn't be medically justified as I found it increasingly difficult to get from couch to kitchen. 

But it was a long 17 months without live - properly live, in-the-flesh, breathing-the-same-air-as-the-players - football watching. As I sat with raised foot in ice, looking at overly-familiar living room walls between forlorn glances at the West of Scotland League Twitter page, the term "medical" became increasingly expansive:

The financial and physical traumas of Covid have, so far, missed me. However, an increasing fixation with the council's bin-emptying schedule and passing fantasies about petrol bombing the "outdoor gatherings only" barbecues organised by the people down the road who get increasingly loud until I can't hear my television and then, when we go to bed, and they're more pissed, their kids start running up and down the street shouting every 20 minutes until three in the morning because they're oh-so fucking liberal in how they look after their kids aren't they the attention-seeking private school utterly fascistic plastic hippy bastards... persuaded me I probably hadn't completely escaped the pandemic's effect on an individual's mental health. 

As I began gleefully racking up the games again, I looked forward to last Sunday's Old Firm game by Tweeting that I would be, whatever the on-field result, maintaining my record of having attended every Celtic visit to Ibrox, to play Rangers, in the 21st Century.

I found this notable only because the last Celtic visit to Ibrox to play Rangers which I had missed was the very last one of the 20th Century. But it was only as I woke up on the morning of the game, lamenting Sunday football - not even a 17 month break has made me like attending a game on a Sunday (Even if indulging in a bit of Ford Super Sunday, it's prmarily a day for the sofa, chocolate and period dramas - Hebrews 11:24-25) - that I realised the truly notable aspect of this claim was the fact it was utter bullshit.

Rangers hosted Celtic three times last season. I attended none of those matches. Yet, somehow, the fact no-one else did - that no-one else other than press, officials, players and strangely large ball boys attended any matches in Scotland last season made me feel that the fact I'd paid to watch every single Rangers home match of 2020-21 on television or laptop - that I'd paid my season ticket for the Covid season - put me there, in that ground, more effectively than all but the other 40-odd-thousand who'd done likewise.

But I wasn't there. And the following list explains how I cannot escape that reality.

Because, for me, every match I attend is a privilege and an honour and a moment in time rarefied by the fact I am, ye know, there.

In the season Covid intervened, in the truncated 2019-20, I was two games from registering the biggest number of matches attended since, probably, the marathon Bluenoses know as 2007-08.

I didn't attend all of the record 68 competitive games Rangers played that season - I missed around 20. But chuck in a few friendlies, Juniors (Scottish non-league) and internationals and was easily approaching 60 all in. 

While I always remember a new ground or team - I'm always painfully aware of who and what I've never seen in the flesh - the slight dubiety, a few years later, about whether or not I made a couple of away games that season encouraged me to begin noting every game I attend. For about ten years now I've composed lists of all the games I go to.

What the hell. yeah, it's incredibly anal but it's the closest I'll ever come to a diary and, as the creatives of the world crumbled under the influence of a global pandemic confining them to barracks in a way they once dreamed of, I soon realised simply noting down a game you've been to is the start of writing more. The unexamined life and all that.

Last season I had nothing to examine other than the fact the two games I was about to attend in March 2020, on the Friday Sturgeon and Johnson stopped the football, were Juniors side Royal Albert at home in Stonehouse on the Saturday and an Ibrox Old Firm derby on the Sunday. That would have taken me to 44 & 1/2 games for that season (oh aye - sometimes I only see a fraction of a game. But I'll note the fractions).

Although I would have had at least a couple of further games to attend if 2019-20 had been concluded with fans in attendance, 44 and one half would have taken me past 2014-15's total by 20 minutes (Rangers v Hearts postponed after 25 minutes due to snow).

Damn. So close. And yet I've had not one word of sympathy from a nurse, doctor or any care home staff. 

Like most of the planet lucky enough to avoid the worst of Covid (again, so far), I've spent a year and a half fantasising about what I would do first when this horrible pandemic finally lost its grip on our lives. Right beside visiting to LA for the first time (I watched every series of Bosch on Amazon Prime) was returning to Hohe Warte, but this time to actually see First Vienna FC play, rather than just wonder open-mouthed around the history-laden old bowl imagining it rammed with 85,000 for Austria v Italy a century ago.

At the present moment in time, for all sorts of obvious reasons, these remain fantasies.

However, in the weekend just past, on Saturday 30th August 2021 I saw Royal Albert and their adopted home, Tileworks Park, in the flesh, for the first time ever; the day after that I was present, in the Bill Struth Main Stand - its listed facade built the same decade as Hohe Warte opened - as Rangers beat Celtic at Ibrox for far from the first time but in an atmosphere wildly celebrating the victory almost less than it warmly celebrated the return to the communal life for everyone present. 

I met my pal at full-time. We went for a pint. I limped home elated, to my sofa, wondering if re-watching a recording of a tight Old Firm game counted as enjoying a period drama. There would certainly be chocolate consumed.

Covid isn't finished with us. But I've got another list to start typing - for 2021-22, another season in which I attended football matches.

2019-20:

(On holiday for Rangers pre-season friendly v Oxford United – disappointed as I’ve never seen them before; and couldn’t be bothered with friendly v Marseille – seen them three times before and we were just back from hols and wanted to watch the Cricket World Cup final on telly. So we did.)

NORWAY* 0 – 5 NETHERLANDS* (Firhill; UEFA Women’s Under-19 European Championship finals, Group A; Tue16/07/19)

RANGERS 6 – 0 St. JOSEPH’S* (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, 1st Qualifying Round, 2nd leg; Thur18/07/19)

SCOTLAND* 0 – 4 NORWAY (Firhill; UEFA Women’s Under-19 European Championship finals, Group A; Fri19/07/19)

RANGERS 1 – 1 BLACKBURN ROVERS* (Ibrox; Pre-season friendly; Sun21/07/19)

FRANCE* 3 – 3 NORWAY (Firhill; UEFA Women’s Under-19 European Championship finals, Group A; Mon22/07/19)

GERMANY* 3 – 1 NETHERLANDS ((Firhill; UEFA Women’s Under-19 European Championship semi-final; Thur25/07/19 [4pm])

RANGERS 2 – 0 PROGRES NIEDERKORN (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, 2nd Qualifying Round, 1st leg; Thur25/07/19 [7:45pm])

RANGERS 1 – 0 DERBY COUNTY* (Ibrox; Pre-season friendly; Sun28/07/19)

RANGERS 6 – 1 HIBERNIAN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun11/08/19)

RANGERS 3 – 1 FC MIDTJYLLAND* (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, 3nd Qualifying Round, 2nd leg; Thur16/08/19 [7:45pm])FIRST HALF ONLY (sale of house fell through, saw e-mail at half-time and went home with score at 2-0)

RANGERS 1 – 0 LEGIA WARSAW* (Ibrox; UEFA Europa League, Play-off Round, 2nd leg; Thur29/08/19)

RANGERS 0 – 2 CELTIC (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun01/09/19)

SCOTLAND 1 – 2 RUSSIA (Hampden; Euro 2020 qualifier; Fri06/09/19)

SCOTLAND 0 – 4  BELGIUM (Hampden; Euro 2020 qualifier; Mon09/09/19)

RANGERS 3 – 1 LIVINGSTON (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sat14/09/19)

RANGERS 1 – 0 FEYENOORD (Ibrox; Europa League Group Stage; Thur19/09/19)

LIVINGSTON 0 – 1 RANGERS (The Tony Macaroni Arena [Almondvale]; Scottish League Cup quarter-final; Wed25/09/19

RANGERS 5 – 0 ABERDEEN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sat28/09/19)

RANGERS 5 – 0 HAMILTON ACCIES (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun06/10/19)

[Sun 13/10/19: Gave away my ticket for Scotland 6 – 0 San Marino in Euro 20202 qualifier as I was on holiday in Minard, however I gave it away for free; Doesn’t count as a game on the Attended list but I “supported” Scotland that night]

RANGERS 2 – 1 MOTHERWELL (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun27/10/19)

RANGERS 3 – 0 HEARTS (Hampden; Scottish League Cup semi-final; Sun03/11/19)

RANGERS 2 – 0 PORTO (Ibrox; Europa League Group Stage; Thur07/11/19)

RANGERS COLTS 2 – 0 WREXHAM AFC* (Ibrox; Scottish Challenge Cup ¼-final; Sat16/11/19)

SCOTLAND 3 – 1  KAZAKHSTAN* (Hampden; Euro 2020 qualifier; Tue19/11/19)

RANGERS 5 – 0 HEARTS (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun01/12/19)

RANGERS 0 – 1 CELTIC (Hampden; Scottish League Cup final; Sun08/01/19)

RANGERS 1 – 1 YOUNG BOYS BERN* (Ibrox; Europa League Group Stage; Thur12/12/19)

LANARK UNITED 2 – 0 KELLO ROVERS (Moor Park**, Lanark; SJFA West League One; Sat21/12/19)

RANGERS 1 – 0 KILMARNOCK (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Thur26/12/19)

WISHAW JUNIORS 2 – 0 KELLO ROVERS (The Beltane**, Wishaw; SJFA West League One; Sat28/12/19)

MARYHILL FC 2 – 6 ARDROSSAN WINTON ROVERS (Lochburn Park, Maryhill; SJFA West League One; Sat04/01/2020)

GARTCAIRN JUNIORS* 1 – 3 WHITLETTS VICTORIA (MTC Park**, Airdrie; SJFA West Championship; Sat11/01/20)

RANGERS 2 – 0 STRANRAER (Ibrox; Scottish Cup Fourth Round; Fri17/01/20)

RANGERS 1 – 0 St MIRREN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed22/01/20)

JOHNSTONE BURGH 4 – 1 YOKER ATHLETIC (Keanie Park**, Johnstone; SJFA West League Two; Sat25/01/20)

RANGERS 2 – 0 ROSS COUNTY (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed29/01/20)

RANGERS 0 – 0 ABERDEEN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sat01/02/20)

RANGERS 2 – 1 HIBERNIAN (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed05/02/20)

RANGERS 1 – 0 LIVINGSTON (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Sun16/02/20)

RANGERS 3 – 2 SC BRAGA* (Ibrox; Europa League Last 32, 1^st Leg; Thur20/02/20)

RANGERS 0 – 1 HAMILTON ACADEMICAL (Ibrox; SPFL Premiership; Wed04/03/20)

THORNIEWOOD UNITED 2 – 0 MUIRKIRK (Robertson Park**, Viewpark; SJFA West Region, League Two; Sat08/03/20)

RANGERS 1 – 3 BAYER LEVERKUSEN (Ibrox; Europa League Last 16, 1st Leg; Thur12/03/20)

****************************************
Covid-19 intervenes. Football in Scotland stops.
****************************************

SUB TOTALS:

[Rangers: 26.5]
Europe: 8.5
League: 14
Scottish Cup: 1
League Cup: 3

[Scotland: 3]
UEFA Euro 2020 qualifiers: 3

[Scotland Youths: 1]
UEFA Women’s Under-19 European Championship finals: 1

[Miscellaneous: 13]
UEFA Women’s Under-19 European Championship finals (in addition to the above Scotland WNT U-19s match): 3
Scottish Challenge Cup: 1
Scottish Juniors: 6
Friendlies: 2

TOTAL: 42.5

Venues: Ibrox x 26.5, Hampden x 5, Firhill x 4, Tony Macaroni Arena, Moor Park**, The Beltane**, Lochburn Park, MTC Park**, Keanie Park**, Robertson Park**

*  New Team (to me, i.e., first time I’m seeing them)
**New venues.