I didn't want to go to Brechin but then German football magazine 11 Freunde ("Eleven Friends") asked if I could, for them, because Germany wanted to know what had happened to Rangers, and I went back to Gary and asked if he still had that ticket I'd knocked back.
Judging by the furiously self-hating tone of this piece, and by the fact I'm just plain wrong about the club "dying", I maybe should indeed have refused this gig, left Glebe Park exclusively to the business-savvy Rangers fans who knew all about the transferring of "goodwill" (i.e., the club), and mourned at home, keeping my emoting - because these aren't thoughts so much as the howls of a wounded man - to my fat self.
11 Freunde translated it into German. It would probably have been better for me if it stayed that way. But, of course, we're often more honest with strangers about stuff we find difficult to discuss with family. So, by way of telling you how I truly felt at the time "the Rangers holding company was liquidated", here's what I wrote for the 11 Freunde of September 2012.
The traditional Rangers motto is Aye Ready - "always
ready" - and I'm just not. I am not ready to move on. I didn't want
Rangers to go to Brechin. If season 2012/13 had to begin at all I didn't want
Rangers involved. But, 48 hours before kick-off, "newco" Rangers are
granted temporary SFA membership as long as they agree to pay some of the old
company's debts. Perhaps it is the same club after all. Then, deus ex machina style, a friend texts to
say he has a spare ticket. I choke down
the guilt - maybe I could have done more to stop Rangers going bust; I displace
the bitterness - most Rangers fans wont acknowledge that liquidation was our
fucking fault; And I postpone the existential debate about what "a
club" is: I suck it all up and I go.
Brechin might boast a
team called City but, with barely 7,000 inhabitants it's actually the smallest
UK town to host league football. Gary phones me from his car as he drives into
Brechin. "Where will I meet you? Where are the pubs?". Glasgow this
is not. He's driven past me and a balloon-festooned hotel bar before he
realises he's passed the centre of town. Only the bouncers on the pub door,
probably drafted in for the day, let him realise he's arrived. He's legally
parked and handing me my match ticket within 3 minutes. The ticket's more like
a perforated supermarket coupon, cheap and overly bright.
Glebe Park holds
4,100 people and is the most quaintly beautiful league ground in Scottish
football. But what you really have to know is that it has a hedge. Around 3
metres high, running half the length of the pitch and with trees from an
adjacent public walkway swaying above, this shrubbery is arguably the most
iconic feature of any venue in Scotland's lower leagues. Today there are 4,123
people in Glebe Park yet still the hedge dominates. It's emblematic. This is
the world we're gate-crashing - too pretty to be hell, too small for our ego.
Rangers have a 51,000-capacity stadium licensed to host UEFA finals, but are
now consigned to the fourth level of Scottish football, playing in consolation
competitions for lower tier clubs.
"Where are the
five stars"? I ask, looking at Gary's new Rangers top. Since our 50th
League title win, in 2003, Rangers have displayed five stars above their
"RFC" crest. Many of the “Bluenoses” pouring into this idyllic market
town in short-sleeved replica shirts have five stars tattooed down their inner
forearm. My mate untucks his shirt and shows the manufacturer's label on the hem-line.
I squint in the Angus sun to see five tiny blue crosses.
All summer I've been arguing with Bluenoses who suddenly
claim "the fans are the club", that liquidation was a mere
technicality. If we've lost nothing through bankruptcy then, by the same logic,
we proved nothing through 140 years of historic football achievement. A
Facebook friend pleads "Why should we feel responsible for what the club
owners got up to?", and I reply, "For the same reason we felt joy at
every win our players achieved". Collective celebration in good times
should mean collective responsibility in bad. Before our fans can move on,
there has to be an emotional as well as intellectual cognisance of what the
hell happened to the Rangers formed in 1872.
My Dad's Protestant, my mother Catholic but neither believe
in god so I was never baptized, Christened or whatever it is you medieval-types
do to your kids. My indoctrination was in football and was self-prosecuted.
Rangers won the domestic treble when I was eight years old. I didn't know what
the Church of Scotland was or how to spell "Vatican child abuse
scandal". I just knew lots of teams wore blue shirts and white shorts but
only Rangers added those black socks with the red fold - and that has made all
the difference.
By the time they
next lifted the league title I was almost eighteen and my psyche utterly
ravaged. In 1988 David Murray bought Rangers. Within a decade he'd equalled
Celtic's record of nine straight titles (I could finally stop pretending Dynamo
Berlin's world record was legitimate), expanded our stadium and taken us to
within one goal of the Champions League final. By the time Sir David Murray
sold Rangers he'd won sixteen league titles, made us Champions League regulars,
taken us to our first European final in 36 years, and signed Catholics as
players, captain and manager in an Ibrox free of sectarian lyrics. He did
everything he could to make Rangers fan's dreams come true while modernising
the club's image. The guy is my fucking hero.
Stars on strips, pubs in streets - everything is harder to
find. When I drove here this morning I took the M80 to the M9 then the A90. I
drove the usual roads I'd take from Glasgow to Pittodrie, Aberdeen or to Dundee
United's Tannadice Park. St Johnstone in Perth are hosting European football
these days. I can drive to those grounds in my sleep. But when I left the A9
between Dundee and Aberdeen, when I departed a footballing map known even to
Barca, Bayern and Liverpool because I had to find the A935, the only thing
sleepy was the scenery to Brechin.
As soon as we'd
secured "Nine in a row", in 1997, the fans who hadn't been there for
the nine years of drought began demanding Murray won more, on a decreasing
budget. Arseholes who attended Ibrox only to impress the guys in the office and
who couldn't tell the difference between 4-2-3-1 and a sand wedge, loudly
derided players I would've killed to see wearing blue in the early 80s. After
1998 there was indeed "financial doping" but there is no clamour to
strip "new" Rangers of old titles; other Scottish clubs don't want
their tax history or player payments scrutinised. I can't feel guilt amidst so
much hypocrisy but I do feel responsibility - my club's death is sufficient
punishment. We're an angry little country with a debilitating lust for football
disharmony and a frightening disrespect for decent chairmen. I blame us, the
Rangers support, for forcing Murray to stretch the tax laws to breaking point.
At Brechin, however, only USA captain Carlos Bocanegra shows
humility - trying as hard here as he did in Old Firm derbies and World Cups.
Brechin City's socks are red so Rangers' must change to
white. Something else unusual - no names on the jerseys, just at the moment I
need them too. There are Rangers players too young or rubbish for me to
recognise - guys signed so late I couldn't read about them on-line, far less in
a newspaper. But the white digits on the blue backs run from 1 to 11. No
unwieldy or marketable "squad numbers". That's nice. That's retro.
That's a tiny benefit of this situation, as was hearing the story of our trip
to Brechin on BBC Radio 4's news headlines. London-based media normally
wouldn't report an alien landing if it happened in Scotland. Reductio ad absurdum - we're so big that
even our smallest ever game becomes a British headline. Today Rangers are the
aliens, so "away from home" it's cosmic.
The demise of Rangers Football Club Plc stemmed from a still
unresolved £49M dispute with the government over a tax avoidance scheme used to
pay players. This, the constant sniping from one media-savvy ingrate fan group
and the global economic downturn affecting his business empire, forced Murray
to sell in May 2011. Craig Whyte was welcomed as a saviour by many. When, on
Valentine's Day 2012, he took Rangers into administration, most fans assumed he
was merely addressing his predecessor's fiscal mismanagement. It transpired
Whyte had actually bought the club illegally and was asset stripping. The SFA
banned him from Scottish Football for life. The police advised him never to
enter Ibrox again for his personal safety. His 9 months of wanton financial
vandalism had Rangers, and its fans, flat-lining.
The top players, like captain Steve Davis and Scotland
international Steven Naismith took 75% wage cuts so the club could survive til
the season's end. I never loved these guys more. Taking the cash as you pick up
winners medals is easy. Only those who played during the Ibrox disaster of 1971
gave as much. The fans organised a fighting fund, scarves were sold in the red
and black colours of our famous socks, representing the Glasgow burgh of Govan.
All this to complete the season. We couldn't pay our bills but we'd fulfill our
fixtures. As manager and club legend Ally McCoist famously said at the time,
"at Rangers we don't do walking away".
February's automatic
ten point penalty for entering administration killed our SPL title defence. A
string of potential buyers, from Jehova's Witness rugby club owners from
Edinburgh to tow-truck tycoons in the USA, made a lot of media noise then
withdrew their offers or had them rejected by the administrators. Fans
organised a huge red card display for a home game against St Mirren, trying to
"send-off" liquidation. With
more league titles than any other club on Earth, we would sell every player and
the stadium to save our history.
On March 25th Celtic
came to Ibrox looking to secure the championship, eager to kick the corpse. An
unfit, unpaid, psychologically drained team united with a psychotically
frenzied Rangers support in the single most emotional display of determination
Ibrox has ever seen. Celtic scored two late goals but by that point they were
3-0 down, my voice was gone, my eyes were full and our beautiful stadium
bounced til it dropped as relief temporarily overtook grief. "I'd rather
die with our history than live with yours" read one laminated, A4-sized
Union Jack. If we were going to die, we'd decide when the funeral was.
Charles Green, an
Englishman previously involved with Sheffield United, bought Rangers when
liquidation was inevitable. He transferred the stadium and training facility to
his "newco" then applied for SPL membership. When the vote went
against him, headlines claimed Rangers had been relegated and would not play in
Scotland's top flight for "the first time in their history". The
media won’t acknowledge that a club just created can't be relegated from a
league of which they have no membership. Oh, and inbetween this, on 12th June
2012, thirty five years of my emotions were disinvested. I was visiting my parents
when liquidation became official. I'd been prepared. But then my mum said
"I can't believe anyone with such a beautiful big stadium can just
suddenly be gone". With that, my bravery was also gone.
I didn't want to be in Brechin because Rangers were born
long before me and I always assumed would long survive me. To attend their
"first ever" game (as it says on the sold-out souvenir Brechin City
mugs), is like that moment in a vampire movie when someone sees a mourned
relative opening their coffin.
When the team bus
pulls in at Glebe Park, the biggest cheer is reserved for midfielder Ian Black,
discarded by Hearts at the end of last season and about to kick his first ball
for Rangers. He's been a hate figure for years, especially after one particularly
cowardly "tackle" on our former striker Nikica Jealvic. Yet here he
is being lauded as a saviour because he's an SPL-standard player willing to
play for Rangers in Division Three. I can't move on so quickly. My heroes and
zeroes of the last few years retain their relevant places in my affections.
Only their shirts have changed.
Steven Naismith
hasn't gone to Everton because he's disloyal to Rangers. Like all the other
heroes of the 2008-2011 period, he's gone because Rangers don't exist anymore.
Their club left them. Only four of last season's first team regulars remain and
two of them want out. The squad at Brechin, supplemented by youth and
third-stringers, could easily fit on the tiny away bench. Craig Whyte did own
Rangers so the transfer embargo imposed because he brought the game into
disrepute is fair. Yes, 7,000 Rangers fans marched on the SFA offices to
protest about it but 200,000 Rangers fans went to the UEFA Cup final in
Manchester. Responsibility. And the SPL want to use Rangers' SFL games to keep
a diluted deal with SKy TV, therefore it's only right that we're given til
September to sign more Ian Blacks before the embargo begins.
Clubs outside the Old
Firm duopoly are often denounced as provincial. The historic, bucolic county of
Angus is downright rural. The stretch for Rangers fans isn't so much geographic
as cultural, even for the Rangers fans who live in Brechin. The traditional
structure of Scottish league football was reminiscent of a large air balloon
tethered desperately to the ground by people as terrified of letting their
investment go as it carrying them off to their deaths. Two behemoths soared way
above everyone, threatening to float off to England or mooted European leagues.
In recent years Motherwell and Dundee held on to their ropes too long and
entered administration.
The temporary TV gantry offends Glebe Park's agricultural
integrity. I'm at the back of the packed stand behind the away goal which is,
in fact, the most comfortable soccer building in all of Angus's four league grounds.
Opposite the TV cameras - BBC Alba, Scotland's Gaelic language channel, is
broadcasting live - temporary electronic scoreboards declare the Scottish Sun
newspaper will provide coverage from "Page 3 (naked ladies) to Division
Three". Above the hoarding a home-made sign in red, white and blue crayon
declares Rangers are "Paedo-free in Division Three". A Celtic Boys
Club coach was once found guilty of paedophilia. The away fans in Glebe Park
turn the message into a chant. The gantry no longer seems offensive.
See, the current
situation is actually exciting for a lot of Rangers fans. Playing up through
the Scottish Third, Second and First Division before an anticipated return to
Scottish Premier League (SPL) glory and our annual European jaunts seems like a
thrilling break from what was a monotonous routine. The vagaries of Cup draws
aside, we won't have to play Celtic. Having endured a minimum of four Old Firm
league derbies for each of the last thirty five seasons, Scotland as a whole
could benefit from a pause in this unrelenting advert for all that's most
myopic about our internecine country.
I'm looking for
something new to do at the weekends anyway. If someone forms a club that plays
at Ibrox, in blue, it could well be my methadone. It would be particularly nice
if all my Rangers friends are watching this club too. We could swap anecdotes
from our collective memory and let that sentiment for old Rangers pour over the
new version. Had the newco been shoe-horned into any rung of Scottish Football
above the Third Division then it wouldn't be a club I could respect. At least
two-thirds of Rangers fans polled by the fighting fund wanted to re-start at
the bottom. Even Division Three membership insults non-league clubs who've
campaigned for years to gain SFL entry.
While it's obvious
Rangers brought the game into disrepute, that they bankrupted themselves and
that the Scottish footballing authorities were endeavouring to get them back on
top, Charles Green stood on the tiny track at Brechin and blamed the new
company's plight on religious bigotry among rival chairmen. It was a
humiliatingly hysterical claim. It boosted Rangers season ticket sales. Is this
what we've become? Did we grow so bored of winning that we now invent reasons
to be "outraged"? Should I just accept that my Rangers is dead?
Romanian international Dorin Goian couldn't stop a Second
Division striker equalising but he lands a later clearance directly atop the
sacred shrubbery. He sits the ball on the one piece of brown hedge in a sea of
green. Fenway Park's Green Monster you want to hit, Glebe Park's hedge you don't.
Its good condition is testament to the respect shown by decades of away fans as
much as Brechin's ground staff. It is a good thing, not to be interfered
with.
After general tugging at the branches to retrieve Goian's
clearance, one Rangers supporter simply throws himself into the hedge and
climbs up to the ball from inside, mangling this hotricultural representation
of the homely purity of lower league football. The Gers support cheer his
re-emergence from the bush. The nasty side of football fandom - where self-pity
and a lack of humility is masked as boisterous defiance - can be suffered by
those big enough to take it. But not the Brechin hedge. Bluenoses should
respect the grounds we will fill for at least the next three years. Moreover,
as per the Murray reign, we'll have to learn that while the occassional ball
will hit us, if it ain't broke we don't fix it.
Reduced Rangers score first through the appropriately named
Andrew Little. But Brechin are a Second Division club. They take the match to
extra time and when Lee McCulloch scores our winning goal, it is the first time
in 140 years that any Rangers side has
beaten a team from a higher Scottish league. I smile and applaud but won't
cheer. One way or another, Rangers are now giant-killers.
