Gers want it oh so badly (GERS … 4 Well … 3)

The Treble’s still on and at lunch-time today we had a serious taste of what it’d be like NOT to win everything in Scotland this season.

If the Bears had previously believed the treble would be a mere novelty while the SPL championship was everything, then we had a very long fifty four minutes in which to contemplate our faith in that maxim.

As Rangers took the lead after just 110 seconds through a Bert Konterman pile-driver from the edge of the box - he loves Hampden semis does our Berti - and as the sun poured down on a near half-empty National Stadium, it was all too easy to fall back into that soft assumption that any competition without celtic will automatically supply more silver for the Ibrox trophy room.

In such a state of lazy comfort, the ease with which a trophy seems Ibrox-bound almost demeans its value. Some of us were applauding in a distracted, laborious fashion as the Gers players mobbed Bert. This is the Easter weekend - most of us are in the midst of a four-day holiday. Some of the Bears couldn’t even be bothered turning up for this game. Of COURSE we were gonnae win - just make sure I’ve got a seat on the bus and a ticket for the final.

But within quarter of an hour Motherwell twice ripped us to pieces and showed every proimise of scoring a few more. Their large, far more enthusiastic support exploded into a rapture as, first Craig equalised from close range after his team-mates exploited an Amo fud-up and, second, James McFadden curled an unstoppable shot round Stef for a goal of spectacular aesthetics.

The way the Well fans shook the stadium and the delirium with which their players danced round the track-side, was wake-up call for Rangers slackers both on and off the pitch. This is a team facing relegation - they want this game more than we do.

For the rest of the half we toiled to make any inroads. The Lanarkshire outfit didn’t sit back any longer than they ever had to. They’re brave to the point of recklessness, as demonstrated by the way one got off with smacking Bazz in the face and another did well to kop a mere yellow when he went in over the ball on Amo, and play some fantastic inter-passing football on the break.

The Gers at least proved they ain’t no one or two-man team. Barry and Amo were both back but the absence of Arteta, Lovenkrands and de Boer transformed us from the breathtaking unit we were at Tannadice last Sunday into a disparate, leaden, often clueless collection of highly-paid individuals.

Suddenly we realised how much we want EVERY trophy available. The idea of not winning the treble, of losing face before next week’s Old Firm showdown, was as unpallatable as it was real.

Shota Arveladze was shockingly inept in the first half. For the second he was replaced by Steven Thompson. We can’t put the subsequent transformation of our fotunes down to that one personnel change but it did have a direct effect on the equaliser. Generally, Thompson held the ball up in a way Arveladze couldn’t. He won it in the air, he won it on the deck and on 56 minutes, he ran and ran at a back-peddling Motherwell defence before timing to perfection a sublime pass to Mols.

Michael, our man of the match by a tulip-adorned mile, dinked home an equaliser which had only first seemed likely when Bazz pinged a 20-yarder off the bar a few moments earlier.

Three minutes later Amo headed home from a Ricksen free-kick to make amends for some of his woeful defending and the comparisons to 1976 could start in earnest.

Motherwell went 2-0 up against Jock Wallace’s first treble-winning team in the Scottish Cup semi of 27 years ago, before The Gers of McCloy, Jardine, Greig etc eventually won 3-2.

With twenty minutes left of the 2003 re-run, a Kevin Muscat cross was turned into his own net by Motherwell’s David Partridge and the nostalgia had less of a parallel to pin itself on … until we gifted the provincials a soft consolation with the last kick of the game.

I admired Motherwell’s style in the first half and it’s always thrilling to see a game where the lead changes hands a few times, but I didn’t enjoy watching Rangers lack of enthusiasm in the early stages. Neither did Alex McLeish and that’s why he went about transforming the players’ collective attitude at half-time, as he has done on so many occasions over the last fourteen months or so.

Aye, we want it again all right … we want the treble BAD!

GERS: Klos, Muscat, Moore (Malcolm 76), Amoruso, Numan, Ricksen (Hughes 79), Konterman, Ferguson, Arveladze (Thompson 45), Mols, McCann.

UNUSED SUBS: McGregor, McLean.

IN DA BOOK: Moore, Mols.

TORSCHUTZEN: Konterman 2, Mols 56, Amoruso 60, Partridge 73 og.

PUNTEROS: 29,352

WEFAWEE: Mike McCurry.