The price of not-quite failure (Pars … 1 GERS … 1)

Let’s all admit it. Supporting your team is one helluva costly business. The Loyalty thing, that pride we all take in following our heroes home and away for as many games and years as possible, is becoming increasingly impractical. Of course, I risk both my life and reputation (So not that much, then) by making such a startlingly frank admission. No doubt I’ll be all over the tabloids this weekend - perhaps fully clothed this time - for daring to speak the unspeakable truth which lurks behind the bank balance of every football punter. Sometimes we just cannae afford to go to another game!

But why is this such a revelation? If every person who claimed to be a true fan attended every home match of their particular club there wouldn’t ever be an empty football stadium anywhere in the world on a match day. Yet there’s always many more sparsely-populated grounds than packed stadia in Scotland every weekend, so why does no-one ever admit they can’t/won’t watch their team EVERY time they take to a pitch? Why is it blasphemy for a fan to say “sometimes I just have more important things to spend my money on”?

Why? Well, up and down the country - in fact, all over this football-shaped planet of ours - there are men and women dominating the company they keep without so much as opening their mouth. These individuals have a command over their friends which comes from past actions rather than present words. Everyone else sat round their table, propped up against the same bar or standing in the gabbing group outside the stadium, knows this person hasn’t missed a game in YONKS. Home and away, good times and bad, fair weather or foul - they’re there, they’re breathing the same air as the team. Respect is due to these super-punters and it’s duly given.

There are Uber-fans everywhere and we all measure our supporter-self-esteem by how close we come to matching that ideal. Start a new job and start a conversation with a new workmate, you find out he or she’s a Bluenose and within seconds you’re comparing the length of your season ticket possession to discover who’s got the biggest Beardom. It’s almost instinctive to assume the validity of your opinions on The Rangers is measured by the number of times you’ve clicked a turnstile to see those men in blue.

Almost instinctive … but totally bollocks:

There are people who’ve never been to Ibrox more than a handful of times who have more love for Rangers and more knowledge of the game than some of the twats who’ve been going every week since Souness arrived and not once engaging emotionally or intellectually with the team. Gers fans sitting by the radio at home, sweating buckets as we hold onto a one-goal lead, count more for me than those who turn up at the match five minutes late, pick on one of our own players to berate for seventy five minutes then, having satisfied their need to prove they’re “In the know”, speed up or down the steps of the Govan, Copland, Enclosure etc as the clock strikes eighty.

Even a lack of by-the-radio perspiration needn’t count against anyone being a True Blue in my book (and I do have a book, you know - in it I list all the Rangers supporters I know and each week I award marks out of ten depending on the authenticity of their emotional reaction to any Rangers occurrence. My Gran is still top … and she passed away more than six years ago). Working yourself into a nervous frenzy over the space of an hour and a half is not the most dificult feat in the world, even if you don’t really give a shit. Some Bluenoses, on the other hand, have a love of The Gers which won’t allow them to ever worry about a result - they always KNOW Rangers will win and never lose any sleep when Rangers don’t … but it’d kill them if their team were removed from their life.

There’s a few of us who earned our stripes in the dark days of the early-mid eighties and never fail to miss a chance to pontificate about it when “loyalty” to the team is thrown into the conversation. I have to plead guilty here and already it sounds like a boast. 1985/86 is the only season Rangers ever finished the league campaign having lost more matches than they won and I was at all but one of them - I just cannae let that go when someone tries to question my commitment to The Gers.

But that was seventeen years ago! I’m almost thirty four now. It was half my lifetime ago. I know the period 1979-1986 shaped my attitude to loving Rangers but how relevant can my behaviour then be to my personality now? I was just a boy then - now I’m a childish man. Furthermore, when I was seventeen I wasn’t old enough to REALLY remember the glory days - there was nothing to compare the bad days to, so the pain, cutting as it was, wasn’t as pronounced for me as for older Bears. The very act of going to the game was thrill enough for me at that age. If Rangers began failing as badly again, if we finished mid-table for the next two or three seasons, would I be seen Follow Following all round the country?

I’d like to think so but I know I’d have to start making a hell of a lot more money than I am right now. I don’t mind that I’ll miss most of our away games this season because, hell, Rangers don’t need me at away games anymore than they need me at Ibrox these days. There’s thousands of Bears ready to take my place at this perod in our history but, back when John Greig was manager and Jock Wallace returned, Rangers needed every punter they could get. In them days you really were letting the side down if you didn’t show up.

I’m not a rich man. In fact, I’m a shockingly poor man for one so stunningly handsome and startlingly intelligent, but over the years I’ve convinced myself you can always find the money to go to A fitbaw match. Be it Rangers, Scotland or Ardrossan Winton Rovers, I just HAVE to be in an arena of any description every weekend. If one of my beloveds ain’t playing I’ll go watch the other. Doesn’t always work out as a practical rule - the Tartan Army is not my scene and even less so because of the dosh required to hike round Europe showing everyone how happy I am in defeat. So when Scotland are away and it’s international weekend, I have to make do with a beverage in front of the TV with a select crowd of family and friends … and their nurses.

Otherwise though, I’ll find a fitbaw match. Loved ones understand this. The money I often have to borrow to mainatin my regular fix is donated as if I were asking for a food hand-out or an extra layer of clothes for the onset of winter: “He’s desperate, ” they say “we couldn’t live with ourselves if we denied him”. Most of the time I just work it into the budget the same way most normal mortals work in their electricity, credit card bills, council tax or mortgage.

But Sunday’s wee slip at East End Park - allowing a side we’ve already defeated four times this season and who haven’t won a league match against us in thirty one years to hold us to a miserable 1-1 draw - has pushed me over the edge. I can’t borrow anymore because I couldn’t be sure of paying it back within an acceptable period - ie, this century - and, being a married man, there really ARE things more important than football which occasionally need money.

So I accepted that I may have to do without another away game this season - I’ve budgeted for as much. Even then, however, even with the credit cards maxed, the consecutive Friday nights in the hoose, the home-made sarnies for lunch and the train to and from work replaced by Shanks’ pony, I’ve managed to put aside JUST enough for the maximum number of two fixtures on NEUTRAL soil which could crop up between now and the end of the season:

A Cup semi-final at Hampden and a Cup final. If we disposed of Dunfermline last Sunday we were in one and trying to get to the other. The latter possible Hampden date COULD - I’m budgeting here so I have to tempt fate just a little - COULD be the day we go for the Treble. Hampden’s not a real away game anyway, is it?! Travel expenses are minimal to the Old Lady for Yours Bluely - I can walk to Hampden from my house if I have to. I can walk back too. If Rangers get there then I WILL get there.

At the beginning of the season I signed up, like many of you, for the scheme which guarantees you tickets for all home Cup matches, domestic and European and all Hampden semis and finals we reach. Although the Zizkov game certainly offered value for money - an extra half hours’ play, for the first time ever Rangers come back from two goals down to lead a European tie, then throw it away, and Stefan Klos almost scores with a header - that’s been it so far this season in terms of Ibrox knock-outs. When we drew the Pars away in the quarters, I was so caught up with the notion of us playing more away league matches than sellik in the SPL run-in and no home games in the cups yet still winning the treble, that I stupidly forgot about the possibility of a replay.

This wasn’t arrogance. Oh No. I was quite happy to think about Dunfermline repeating their success of 1988. In fact, I’m usually more apt to contemplating a Rangers defeat than a Rangers victory but, in monetary terms, I’d just enough dosh spare over the next couple of months to keep the credit card under it’s limit to the tune of fifty quid - enough for two Hampden Scottish Cup dates (Scotland games I have covered due to the SFA’s sponsorship deal with Safeway - I spend enough in a week at their deli counter alone to merit free executive boxes for life) and my two-track, win-or-lose brain thought that was as much money as I’d need for football tickets between now and 31st May.

When The Gers stepped out onto the badly-drained unmanageable dog’s dinner that is the East End Park pitch, my only worry was the possibility of injury to our delicate, footballery footballers and the very sizeable drop in our inspiration quota effected by the absence of one Renzo Amoruso.

Craig Moore would again have to coach Renzo’s unworthy understudy, Bob Malcolm through the game and while Bert Konterman played superbly when he came on as a midweek midfield sub, it was against Motherwell … who wree already 2-0 down at the time.

Mr Konterman has scored at East End Park a couple of times (he might get the chance to do it a few more times too as I’m convinced that’s where he’ll be heading at the end of this season if his old gaffer, Jimmy Calderwood can come up with the readies) but he’s got nothing on boyhood Raith Rovers fan, Claudio Caniggia. Was it Raith Rovers? Maybe it was East Fife or even Cowdenbeath Claudio loved. But, somehow, while all his school chums noisily loathed the likes of Indepeniente, Boca Juniors, RIver Plate, Racing etc, THIS boy from Buenos Aires managed to aquire a healthy hatred of Dunfermline Athletic which has inspired him to this season’s one-man demolition job of the Fife flunkeys.

He scored a hat-trick in our first SPL visit to Pars-land, he scored a late-ish winner in the CIS Cup quarter-fianl in his next. Then it was an even later icing-on-the cake job during our second SPL victory at East End Park and in this match, once again, Claudio Caniggia scored for Rangers away to Dunfermline. Six goals in one season at one away ground - that’s maybe not a record but scoring in four different matches, in three different competitions, at the same away ground, against the same team, in the same season HAS to be a record. Is it? Anyone?

This time, though, the gaucho goal was an equaliser. It was peach of a finish from a peach of a ball by Ronnie de Boer who, in spite of the pitch, was playing a bit of a blinder behind Claudio and Neilly. Lovinpants, scorer in his last two matches, was out with flu (strange name for a lady - maybe it’s Danish) so we were one crucial option less in attack even if we did have Arteta back in midfield. Consequently, The Farmer’s efforts on a ploughed field were very much appreciated.

Shortly after he played Claudio in for the deftest of touches past an advancing and generally brilliant Stillie, Ronnie watched in amazement as the Pars keeper parried a point -blank header from the Dutch genius. Well, he watched in amazement until he recovered enough composure to walk over to the goals and kick the shit out one of the posts.

But Ronnie’s coolness of play was just what was required after we’d lost the opening goal on 23 minutes. A long ball up to Craig Brewster seemed to catch the ancient striker roughly a mile off-side. As we appealed, however, and reminisced about Brewster’s part in another Scottish Cup catastrophe some nine years ago, he played in overlapping wing-back Grondin and, from the edge of the box, the Frenchman smacked an unstoppable drive into Stef’s left hand corner.

Any worries in the away sections of the ground were, however, quickly quelled by the Rangers reaction. Dunfermline went ahead in the 23rd minute. By the 24th, Rangers were back in easy but purposeful control of the match. Ricksen walked his usual fine line, Bazz wasn’t as great as he can be and Neilly McCann wasn’t showing any signs of the class he demonstrated in our last visit to this corner of Fife. But we had Ronnie de Boer, ex of Ajax Amsterdam and Barcelona. Nuff said.

After his part in the equaliser, Ronnie had that header saved. Muscat fired in a great shot which hit the post. Dunfermline hit us on the break from the rebound and Stef did marvellously to snuff out what looked like a clear chance for Pars skipper and goal-machine Steve Crawford. By the 52nd minute, the two Jimmys on the home bench realised Rangers were back in full control and they brought on the peroxide, emaciated box of tricks which is Noel Hunt.

The little fellah caused us much trouble in that last league visit and he was soon giving us all sorts of problems again. His rabid, all-out attacking style soon had our midfield and defence in a fankle and his determination to show how much he hates Rangers soon had him squaring up to untouchable Barry Fergie and receiving a Kevin Muscat grip to his throat for his troubles. Bob Malcolm went in the book for trying to nail him much as we’d nailed him last time.

But the real injury was caused by firstly a Claudio Caniggia headed miss from unmissable range and then Shota Arveladze, strangely on as a sub for the increaisngy effective Neil McCann, showed us the TRUE meaning of “unmissable” by somehow heading the ball from under the Dunfermline crossbar, back off the goal-line and over the same bar (slight exaggeration … but only slight).

Ged Brannan’s on loan at Dunfermline from Wigan. That’s Wigan Athletic the Association Football team rather than Wigan Rugby League team, although you’d have been hard pressed to tell the difference when he wrapped his arms round Mikel Arteta’s legs and literally hauled the Basque to the ground, inside the Pars box. John Underhill said “play on” … as did the touch judge.

Next significant thing John Underhill did was send off Barry Ferguson. Hunt was getting all “jinkey” up the touch line and so Bazz decided enough was enough and went in at knee height. A lot of neutral media punters seemed to think the ref was harsh in dismissing Barry but, much as it galls me to say so, I thought the intention was there to do serious damage. Hunt managed to evade the tackle and he and Barry had a friendly exchange before our leader departed. This act of reconciliation and the almost matter-of-fact way in which Barry accepted the dismissal, seemed to confirm our capo knew what he’d done.

Bazz is forgiven - totally, unconditionally and immediately. But he ain’t missed a game all season and, what with Amo out too … well, that’s a discussion for later. Right now we’re 1-1 with Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup quarter-finals and there’s barely a minute of normal time left.

So there I was, suddenly realising that a replay would mean a Cup game at Ibrox which would mean an automatic extra and crippling debit on my credit card. The only way to retrieve the money would be to sell the ticket to a friend (It’d have to be a friend because, of course, you don’t get noh ticket as such - it’s just activated on your smart card season ticket .. and I ain’t giving no stranger my season ticket … noh siree!)

If you wanted to ensure you saw EVERY Rangers game in a season - if you wanted it known you were THAT loyal, but you simply couldn’t afford the price of an unexpected replay, would you actually wish for Rangers to LOSE?!! We’re a man down - that man being our captain, our top scorer, our inspiration - our defence has been anything but reliable, our strikers are connecting with crosses in ways which leave nuclear physicists tearing up years of theorems, and the officials are obviously keen to give us nowt. There’s no chance of us WINNING this game so the only way you can avoid a glitch in your 100% attendance record is if there’s no replay … if Rangers actually LOSE the game.

What happens then? Who’s the “best” Rangers supporter then? Who’s “most loyal” in this scenario? Is it the Bear who says “come on Dunfermline - I need to know I’ve been at EVERY Gers game this season” or is it the guy who says “Come on Rangers - even if I can’t be there, I want yese to win this time and EVERY time” ? Is going to every game more important for some declared uber-fans than the actual success of the team they claim to love more than life itself?

A convoluted scenario for you to mull over, troops - admitted. But I’m afraid my own situation last Sunday proves it’s in no way contrived. As the vast majority of Rangers fans don’t go to the vast majority of Rangers games then hopefuly it’ll give most folks reading this rant a little more perspective on how to deal with the guy who loves to tell you he’s been there more than he loves being there.

Me? Suppose I will get to the replay, after all. Someone close to me will just have to go short this Sunday. Ach, I’m sure she’ll understand - Mothers day comes around every year but attending a Rangers against Dunfermline game … MAN! - that’s a seven-times-in-a-season opportunity you just gotta grab while you can.

What’s more, when Dunfermline beat us in the replay I’ll save the price of those two Hampden dates.

RANGERS: Klos, Moore, Konterman, Muscat, Ricksen, Ferguson, Arteta, McCann (Arveladze 74), Caniggia, de Boer, Malcolm.

UNUSED SUBBIES: McGregor, Thompson, Ross, Eggen.

OFFSKEY THE PARKEY: Ferguson (89).

YELLOWED: Ricksen, Muscat, Malcolm, Moore.

SCORER: Caniggia 31.

PUNTERS: 9,875

MAN WHO PUNTED BARRY: John “underhand” Underhill.