Boumsongless Gers end year Well. (GERS … 4 M’Well … 1)

Both these games were at Ibrox and in my memory’s eye, I’m stood outside the Main Stand, looking up at the red-brick facade as I so often do on match days. But this time I’m finding it’s magnificence painful to consider: Neither the many Gers games I’ve attended previously or the thousands of pounds I know I’ll personally pump into The Club in the future can stop me feeling slightly alien in such a familiar landscape. I’m not feeling what everyone else is feeling. I’m not one of the gang. I’m getting just too much of a tiny taste of what it might be like not to support Rangers. When your team is playing on one side of a wall and you’re on the other, it’s a uniquely horrible sensation.

Some games you go along to and you think you’re not that excited or even interested. You might feel there are better things to do or that The Rangers don’t really need you on this particular day. But when Rangers are playing, when the game kicks off, and you can’t see what’s happening, you suddenly realise there is nowhere else in the world you would rather be.

Yeah, sure, the old “Grass is always bluer” syndrome applies to most aspects of life. It’s not just yer fitbaw fan who suddenly wants something all the more simply because he can’t have it. But to this day I have two on-field images seared into my brain from both those late eighties games I failed to get into. The Spurs friendly - which also saw Trevor Steven’s home debut I think - was shown in highlight form on STV that same evening and the image of Johnston stood there, minutes before kick-off, lined up facing the Main stand as in a European game as the new Gers team greeted the punters before their new season, is with me still. NOT because of the whole Catholic-playing-for-Rangers thing but for seemingly insignificant reasins: Because the shirt we wore that day was a specially-designed summer jersey, made of a lighter material which gave the colours a nifty sheen. And because the stadium was packed with 40,0000 plus baying bears and the sun shone down and MoJo was looking up at the inner shadow of the Main stand I was stood outside and … and … and like the Sunday paper photograph of Rangers and Hearts slogging out a stalemate in the midfield of a dull, rain-soaked Ibrox pitch, the Spurs game suddenly looked like the most important match in the history of the Rangers world: Purely because I wasn’t there. I’ll never get those games back - they’re gone forever.

And on Monday, on what David Begg of BBC Scotland reminded us was the REAL Boxing Day (first WEEKday after Christmas Day!), I discovered that it’s not just that common yearning for what ye can’t have which makes those missed games seem so disproportionately vital. Yesterday I got a taste of what it was like to be stuck on the poutside when the game’s going on and then to be INSIDE - and it was even more horrible on the outside and when I finally entered the Brox and saw the pitch and the players and the crowd, despite my anger at missing both Nacho’s early goals, the whole sight was undeniably, utterly MAGNIFICENT.

When I eventually got into my seat yesterday, The Teds were 2-0 up. Twenty-odd minutes had elapsed and Nacho Novo’d already won teh game. Playing his one game amid the three SPL fixtures for which he’s suspended, Ignacio had wasted no time in staking a claim to an instant recall when his suspenison’s up. Putting us back to one point behind The Smellies within twenty minutes was about as brutally incisive as we could have hoped for. The wee man was devestating and Motherwell were devestated to a degree from which they would never recover.

The first goal I saw was the only one scored by Terry Butcher’s gutsy young team. The infamously horribly bitter, sectarian and self-obsessed Rangers support augmented the roars from the small Lanarkshire support with a sprinkle of sporting applause. All joking aside, the Motherwell goal - the fellah cutting along the front of our defence and lashing one across Stef into the top corner from twenty yards out, was so good that the applause from The Bears and Bearettes was probably so sponatneous as to be beyond sporting. What a goal it was. Some folk just had to clap.

This was just after the break. But before Well could even consider pegging us back to level terms, we were up the park and winning a corner. From that moment on the Rangers pressure was so intolerably intense that, were we not so pleased at securing the three points, there was legitimate reason to be angry at our players for only converting another two chances.

Nacho’s run and pass to Arveladze was testament to the unbelievable workrate of our tiny Spaniard - his contribution from and to every area of the game - Shota’s finish was testament to his quietly consistent strike-rate for The Gers. It came so quickly after Motherwell’s goal that it killed off any momentum the visitors could possibly have felt, before it even registered. The other great worker of The Gers team these days, Dado Prso, went off to make way for the brilliant Stevie Thompson and, once again, the big Scotland international went from bench-warmer to match-winner. If Stevie isn’t simply securing us games by his doggedly physical leading of the line for the last ten-fifteen minutes then he’s scoring a goa to make it all much more material. What a goal too. Typical of him. Fighting for posession, holding off the world to make himself available for a pass from Nando, turning a tight marker and digging a shot out before a barrage of incoming tackles can descend, to curl one into the net from outside the box. Magnificent.

We missed a few sitters inbetween times and the Motherwell goalie, Corr, was outstanding for as many shots as he was stupid for others. All-in-all, though, we hammered them. And we hammered them without Jean-Alain Boumsong who pulled up during the warm-up with an injury which many feel is very handy for a man trying to stay fresh for a move during a transfer window which begins next week. We had to get used to the big fellah leaving at some point - we might as well do it now - no harm to him. He’s been a fu**ing pleasure to watch.

We know Stefan isn’t the cleverest with the kick-outs but on Monday he missed the ball altogether with no real pressure bearing down on him. This is somewhat uncharacteristic - a bit like Mozart hitting a bum note - and there are two possible reasons for this lack of concentration from Der Goalie. It could be that he was considering whether or not to return to Western Germany during the January transfer window - he could help Craig Moore settle in at Borussia Moenchengladbach - OR he was daunted by the presence of GOD: Goram was on the pitch at half-time doing the draw - Stefan knows he just won’t ever be as good … it must get to him at times.

The news of Boumsong’s sudden inury came to me via my car radio - at 2:55 pm - as I was just turning off the M8 and onto Shieldhall Road. It took me an hour and ten minutes to get from Glasgow to East Lothian that morning so, leaving at 12:45 pm for the return journey seemed ample time. But then, just as I hit the M8, Tam Cowan announced he’d have to do his first ever traffic news update in ten years of doing Off The Ball for Radio Scotland. Such was the severity of the Westbound tailback on the main Scottish autobahn. It was a serious accident apparently - a few Rangers heart-attacks might well have followed: The frustration levels were going through the roof. NOT HELPED when Richard Gordon suddenly announced at 2:50, with me still to hit the Kingston Bridge, “Kick-off has been delayed…” (YA BYOOTY!) ..”…at Tannadice”. Damn that extra-big Hibs support for raising my hopes.

By the time I got parked, all the best spots had been taken and I was in for a long walk to The Palace. Only a day before I’d been discussing the number of times Rangers’ ve scored two early goals at Ibrox under McLeish’s tutelage. Walking along Broomloan Road I had that dreadful feeling of guilt which follows the realisation you don’t want Rangers to be scoring until you’re there to see it. How selfish! But I was suitably punished when I heard the huge roar, followed by the story of how a certain striker said no thanks to a bunch of wanks. Me? I was walking in an anxiety dream blunderland. I trotted all the way along to the Copland end of the Govan, only to find the shuters down on the gates - I had to run back down to the middle of the same stand - they only leave one gate open for latecomers!

When I eventually popped out of the vomitory into the amphitheatre a quick glance at the scoreboad put the boot right in - TWO-nil!! But the cut-up pitch (El-Tel told us on the radio it was a disease which effects grass causing the damage!), the dankness of the day being pierced by the Main stand flodlights, Motherwell in that beautifully and unavoidably dull strip of theirs, the roar of the crowd thrown upon you suddenly at 3:20 PM instead of building up around you gradually from 2:45 PM, and the sight of those LOVELY, LOVELY Blue shirts, white shorts and Red and Black socks throwing an indelible colour over the whole day, made me realise there is nothing more vital and vibrant than BEING THERE.

I’ve since seen Nacho’s smashing wee brace on the not-so-smashing Scotsport and, of course, I was soon thinking of other games where I’d been held up enroute to the ground and missed an early goal:

Souness’ first trophy as Rangers manager arrived on a Friday night at Ibrox as we did a Celtic team which ‘d been crowned League Champions six days previously. Ally McCoist’s hat-trick in a 3-2, extra-time win will always be a brace to me. Wee Dingy and I rushed into the East Enclosure to find out the Souness revolution was already started without us.

A few months later I was stood outside that massive big gable with the huge Heart of Midlothian crest which used to constitute the positively Victorian entrance to the positively Georgian away end at Tynecastle. A bloke, the only other bloke on Gorgie Road it seemed, was trying to convince me to give him the full price for only the left-hand stub of a “spare” ticket. I made him come up to the turnstyle operator and have his claim validated before I gave him the cash. On squeezing my way into the packed, sun-drenched terrace, I was informed we were already 0-1 down to a Walter Kidd strike.

That game ended 1-1 and the point, gained against a Hearts team who came within a whisker of winning the previous season’s Double and hadn’t lost at home for over a year, was a vital contribution to what eventually became our first championship in nine years. The goal was even more beautiful than it was significant - scored by a man who’d played in our last league-winning side and who only popped the ball in the net after running half the length of the pitch and beating every Jambo player in sight. He knocked it into the Gorgie Road end, right in front of thousands of Bluenoses - many of whom who’d watched a lot of unadulterated shite from their club for the best part of a decade - who then bobbed up and down to the point of sunstroke. It was a beautiful moment - only one of many provided by a beautiful player:

Congratulations to the Blue Order. And thanks. What a flag that is - so glad it was unfurled at half-time, when I was in the ground: Davie Cooper - he played for the team he loved, I love, we all love.

Have a very Happy 2005, folks.