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 100th 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.
