Bazza-ness as usual ? (GERS … 2 M’well …0)

I took the train to Exhibition Centre station tonight. I walked past the Armadillo building, crossed the Bell’s bridge and bypassed the Science Centre with the pod of the gangly observation tower looming overhead like some sort of malevolent low-flying aircraft.

However, as I reached the streets of the real Ibrox approach - the landscaped expanse of 21st century Clydeside giving way to Prince’s Dock, Govan Town Hall and the hybrid industrial buildings surrounding the two-storey residences - I noticed the pish stains, the fag ends, the chewing gum and the discarded booze bottles, I noticed them more than I maybe ever have before.

It’s fair to say I wasn’t gripped with the usual pre-match buzz that’s become traditional for me, almost involuntary, throughout the years I’ve been making this journey by whichever route. But why? Why was I regarding the endless rows of parked supporters’ buses which half the width of the roads as more of an incumbrence to my safe passage than an excitingly sudden wall of a magical maze? Why was I seeing them as big bl**dy nuisances of things when I usually regard them as the galley ships of fellow warriors, about to join battle for the Govan grail? Why were the scents from the interminable fast-food wagons now regarded as more of an insult to the culinary arts and Scotland’s heart-attack statistics than a whiff of anticipation of The Gers at play? Why were the staggering bluenoses who occasionally came into view no longer mildly amusing snap-shots of football fandom but simply annoying drunks?

In short, why the slightly grumpy c**t, Eck?

I didn’t know, couldn’t put my finger on it. Okay, there was bound to be a slight anti-climax after the silverware-lifting excesses of the previous Sunday but Motherwell this particular Wednesday night stood directly between Rangers and an even bigger prize than the CIS Cup. This was the SPL - this was as vital a game as we’d played all season because the Championship of Scotland is what it’s REALLY all about, isn’t it?

The Lanarkshire men may not be providing as glamorous a show-down as that we’d experienced at Hampden just three days before hand but the vital nature of this match was apparent to everyone. Why wasn’t I feeling this in my stomach, the place where such games usually make their mark on me some half hour or so before kick-off?

Motherwell had, of course, defeated both ourselves and the “second-placed team in the league” earlier in the campaign. After playing Rangers tonight, they’d face celtic in a controversially rearranged SPL fixture next month. Despite being bottom of the league, Terry Butcher’s young outfit were taking on the role of Kingmakers. WHY WAS I SO NOT UP FOR IT??!!

The answer had something to do with the colours red, white and green.

On Whitefield Street my eye was caught by a Welsh flag. For some reason a big red dragon on a green and white background suddenly stood out more brightly in my peripheral vision than all the Union Jacks, Red Hands and Saltires emblazoned on the RSC shields affixed to bus windows.

I looked to my left and saw, through the secured hallway of what initially looked like a fire station, a framed Welsh flag. As I continued my walk towards The Stadium, I noticed a basic but clean function suite through the windows of the same building. This was some sort of barracks. I’d passed this place a million times before and suddenly, only now, was I realising its military connection. Usually I’m too preoccupied with what’s about to take place or what has just happened on a football pitch to pay any mind to this army property.

The crowd on the pavement behind me was big and fast-moving enough to stop me discovering the exact nature of the outfit which use this singularly unimposing building but I’m guessing it must have some close association with the Welsh Guards. A flash of a camouflaged jeep through a seven-foot iron fence pushed my thoughts still further from the football.

The game was as much of a procession as anything which happens on a parade ground. Motherwell are, it seems, as useless away from home as they are dangerous to the Old Firm at Fir Park.

Rangers legend Butcher used his inside knowledge of the Ibrox support to eek out some modicum of psychological advantage. Motherwell won the toss and immediately made us shoot towards the Copland Road stand in the FIRST half. They then embarked on a celtic-style huddle before a ball was kicked. There were some half-hearted boos. That was as much as the claret and amber men ever did to upset the Bluenoses.

James McFadden hit a superb, curling cross-field pass onto the very laces of Dirk Lehman in the seventh minute. A little Teutonic cameo saw Stefan Klos save brilliantly from the Well striker. Ater that McFadden contented himself with a petty running niggle with Fernando Ricksen and the visiting team were never in any danger of scoring. Even when Kevin Muscat and then Bob Malcolm contrived to gift them the ball in our box in the latter stages of each half, Stef saved with ease.

In the eighteenth minute Michael Mols was upended on the edge of the Well box. Captain Barry stepped up and curled the free-kick into the visitors net with all the vicious grace of a tribal hunter spearing a distant bison. It was a beautiful goal, scored by a man in beautiful form and his race towards the East Enclosure, uncontrollable joy in his demeanour, showed that Fergie is enjoying every minute of Rangers’ march back to the top.

Kevin Muscat was one of the Gers playing only because first-choicers were injured. Amoruso’s questionable ban began tonight and Bob Malcolm did okay alongside the impeccable Craig Moore. Arteta’s style was missed but we didn’t want for too much penetration in his absence. Bert Kontermna came on in the second half and put in a flawless little midfield performance which was, sadly, still cheered with as much sarcasm as genuine appreciation.

But Muscat was there because Arthur Numan and Jerome Bonnissell were injured. Left back is not Kev’s first-choice position and he returned to his habit of giving hospital passes every now and then. However, in the 45th second of the second half he gathered the ball on that alien flank and, by the 50th second he’d slipped past one opponent, outpaced another and then slotted a ball through to Peter Lovenkranbds which was duly slotted into the Broomloan Road net. The Flying Dane had us 2-0 up for the second time in the week but, as Peter ran onto the track, roared with the Bears and cartwheeled along the pitch, we all knew it was the Akward Aussie who was the star of this little goal.

Two wee girls in Rangers tracksuits came onto the pitch at half-time with the League Cup. Andy Goram - the greatest Rangers player I’ve ever seen - did the half-time draw in a black leather jacket rather than a blue blazer. The police lined the perimeter throughout the interval, as if we were going to invade the pitch for two valuable commodities we’ve seen all too often and in far more excitable circumstances.

Police around a perimeter? Red, white and green? The source of my ennui was revealing itself to me by these little clues. And then, as I made my way back over the covered walkway which takes you from the SECC, over the motorway, and into the Exhibition Centre train station it hit me.

The surface of the big bridge-in-a-tube is split into a red pedestrian lane and a green cycling lane by a thin strip of white asphalt. The last time I realised it looked like an elongated but squashed Italian flag was the last time I’d felt guilty for being more concerned about football than the world events which are currently saving and/or costing hundreds, thousands or millions of lives (depending on who you listen to and who you believe).

Last time I’d traversed that walkway I’d just passed the huge SECC carpark surrounded, unusually, by crush barriers. There was nothing left of the protesters except the litter and the residue of a huge police presence, still guarding the Labour Party conference. The war they’d tried to stop is now a matter of minutes away.

As I approached the train station I again trod on a little piece of vandalism, sprayed across that Italian tricolore of a bridge, which I’d barely noticed two and a half hours earlier: “Stop The War” it told me.

Soldiers, civilians, and even dictators - they can all be football fans too. But I still felt deeply and rightly uneasy with the fact I think more about being six points and five goals better off than celtic than I do about the events in Iraq. The journey home from the SECC was in a darkness which had only just begun to enshroud the trip out. But I felt I was seeing things a little more clearly.

GERS: Klos, Muscat, Malcolm, Moore, Ross, Ricksen, Ferguson, de Boer (Konterman 58), Lovenkrands (McCann 66), Thompson, Mols (Arveladze 60).

UNUSED SUBS: McGregor, Hughes.

YELLOW CARDS: Lovenkrands, Muscat.

SCORERS: Ferguson 18, Lovenkrands 46.

CROWD: 49,240

REF: Shug “Hans Blix” Dallas.