Half-empty, half-final truths (GERS … 3 Pars … 0) [from april 9th, by the way]

Last time I was at an Ibrox midweek game I was full of pre-war-on-Iraq blues. My subsequent match report on that 2-0 win over Motherwell was full of dark, guilty, badly-written foreboding and reflection on the void between military action and civil protest in which I’d carefully placed myself.

Some sort of army barracks on the road to Ibrox had me worrying about the soldiers who’d die, the soldiers I should be supporting. The SECC car-park, scene of an anti-war rally a few weeks earlier, reminded me of my failure to object to what was about to happen in the Middle East.

To be honest, I still don’t know my true opinion on the whole matter. Some 4,000 deaths and a million TV news items later, I’m remain as 100% unsure as ever. I escaped into football for the three weeks of the conflict. The preliminary bombing began on the Thursday after the Motherwell match, the fall of Baghdad was all but official on the night of this match. For my reality-avoiding personality, Rangers matches providing such prominent bookends to the military campaign in Iraq is an out I couldn’t avoid taking.

Sure, there’s saturation coverage of the conflict on every medium - there are infinite numbers of people more qualifed than I to speak about the Iraqi situation - and you’re reading this because it’s a football rather than a world affairs website. However, it doesn’t change the fact that fans’ attitudes to some football matches aren’t always shaped by the result of the game. In short, if you want the full picture on my subjective view of Rangers v Dunfermline on Wednesday 9th April 2003, you have to know I enjoyed it so much because I no longer felt so guilty about avoiding the fullest picture.

I left the house before this game more worried that my smart card hadn’t been activated by the Ibrox ticket ofice than what kind of humanitarian crisis was about to engulf the suddenly “free” Iraqi population. I left my better half watching pictures of that statue of Saddam Hussein being hauled to the ground. All the dictator-toppling symbolism of such an act makes it a custom at the end of any such conflict. But it’s only the military action which is fizzling out - the real pain is far from over for the people of that region. Yet, even as I flippantly berated the corney nature of the reporting of this stage-managed iconoclasm, I was more than happy to buy into the myth that the whole mess was now over.

I ran past that barracks again as I dashed from the Exhibition Centre train station to The Brox - I noticed a completely un-missable TA sign on the gable. Jeeze! - the lads and lassies in this establishment were unlikely to have even heard of anyone involved in the gulf, far less have to go there themselves. By the time I was back at that train station, my only thought on the Exhibition Centre was that it could never stage a finer exhibition than the one I’d just witnessed on the Ibrox turf.

The smart card worked okay and little wonder. With such obvious punter apathy surrounding this unexpected replay, the Rangers ticket bureau would be loathe to miss a single automated, pre-generated demand for a cyber brief. The US army can’t differentiate between hostlie Iraqi positions and a friendly British Army patrol but I can order a ticket, one year in advance, for a game which no-one knew would take place, I can pay for it and be granted physical admission to the ground, all without me ever having to speak directly to a human being. Thank gawd we’ve got our priorities right, eh?!

Sky were covering the match live - that probably took about ten thousand off the gate. If I hadn’t already signed up for all cup matches at Ibrox I probably wouldn’t've bothered going along. I’d watched Real Madrid dismantling Man United the previous evening - a footballing joy to behold - and ITV 2 was tonight showing Juventus at home to Barcelona in another mouth-watering Champions League quarter-final. Increasing my Ibrox apathy factor still further was the little mater of a newly-arrived season ticket renewal form, sitting at home, with the price of