Sickening (GERS … 2 Killie … 1)

The three points were collected. The win which we were told would “put pressure” on Celtic is now a sign of Rangers caving under the pressure. Whatever. Sometimes you just have to take the two extremes of media spin and find the truth in the middle. Short term, we did the biz. Long term, we have extra problems to contend with. All in all, today’s events give an extra, retrospective resonance to our previous fixture.

It looks as though the side which won so gloriously at Parkhead last weekend will never play together again. The break-up of the Salvation Sunday XI began even before Kilmarnock arrived in Govan. Roland Wattereus was not dropped in a sudden fit of egomania by McLeish. It would be nice to think that a Man Of The Match display against Celtic was not enough to guarantee you a place in Rangers’ first team. However, Ronald had actually picked up a wee injury in the East End six days ago (Perhaps a 50p piece lodged in his skull?). The Stefan Klos replacement was himself replaced by the original Stefan Klos replacement, Alan McGregor.

Michael Ball also failed to start today (Not the first time I’ve used that phrase). An American Express gold card, customer name D Desmond, was removed from his cranium last Sunday night. Or maybe it was another kind of injury. Either way, young Stevie Smith was our left back, alowing Monsieur Vignal to retain his season-defining midfield role.

All my chatter midweek had focussed on the need for our team to get their feet on the ground prior to the Killie game. The Gers would, I expertly analysed, come unstuck if they failed to follow up last Sunday’s garagntuan result with a victory over pishy Killie. I’d advocated concentration and humility. I almost wanted McLeish’s men to forget about what happened at parkheid.

This, of course, was a lot of piffle. What Rangers really wanted to be doing was hitting the ground running today. Rather than forgetting about it, they wanted to feed off the adrenalin and optimism created by our seminal Parkhead triumph. In fact, sod the ground altogether - we wanted to keep flying! Naturally, this didn’t occcur to me until I began to realise it might not happen. When news of the enforced personnel changes reahced me, just before I hit the Clyde Tunnel and the radio reception was temporarily lost, I suddenly decided that we needed to take off exactly where we finished against the hooped hordes: Missing two of our key players made this more difficult. As long as I’ve got something to be worried about, I’m happy.

But, even sans Wattereus and sans Mikey Baw, Everything initially seemed to be going to plan in this rearranged SPL encounter. The sun shone on the righteous and Big Dado had the ball in the back of the Killie net with a big fat ONE on the clock. Unfortunately, the big fat REF and his big fat DAGLO linesman decided there’d been some sort of previous infringement. Nae goal.

(By the way, if the Italian officials look like clowns in those spandex, lumey outfits, what chance do a set of pastey-faced, beer-bellied, balding Scottish refs have of looking like anything other than pensionable transvestites at a swimsuit competition?!)

It wasn’t pretty after that. Kilmarnock were the footballing version of their manager’s personality: Sullen, grim, grudging, mean. Jim Jeffries had infused his charges with a Mafeking spirit. They were going to hold out for as long as possible. They were determined to hang on til the reinforcemnts arrived. By the time Nish and Dargo took to the pitch, a draw was a serious possbility.

For by that, we couldn’t break them down. Combe was having a good game in their goal. Rangers had an air of jaded authority. We knew how things were suppossed to go but when the customary early goal into the Broomloan end wasn’t allowed we seemed a tad put out. There was never any real threat on our goal - especially with Herculean Marv and Smoothey Sotirios in such blinding form. And we were carrying all the pressure into Killie’s box. But Buffel, Nach and Dado were getting no change and Bazza’s promptings weren’t as razor-sharp as they have been in the other games since his return. The usual scriptwriter was obviously pulling a sickey.

But, as the sun rose high abover the Main Stand, Dado struck upon a lazier method of getting the ball through the Killie defence. Rather than all this “running through” the opposition players rather than all the, dribbling, weaving, shielding, twisting and turning nonsense - which he’d just tried for the umpteenth time with no real progress - he just booted the thing straight intae the back of the net. There was almsot an air of “fu** this for a lark” when he pulled up on the edge of the 18-yard box - his six all-white shadows stood faithfully in front of him once more. And there was a contemptuous directness to the curling rocket he delivered around the same defenders.

Twenty Four minutes is actually a good bit longer than we’ve had to wait for most opening goals at home this season. Maybe the injuries were affecting us after all. Maybe the thought of leading from the front in the League race really was getting to our still embryonic squad. More likely it was a combination of the two - and Killie’s competent Catennacio.

The break-up of the Salvation Sunday starting XI was completed ten minutes later. And it was fu**ing horrible.

Leg breaks are not the things you want to remember from football matches. I’ve probably seen more than a dozen, in the flesh and the bone, in all the years I’ve been fitting myself through turnstyles. But some are unavoidably imprinted on the memory.

I was at Pittodrie in 1988 when Simpson did Ian Durrant. The Bears were throwing the coins that day. I was also at Ibrox, one midweek a year earlier, down in the West Enclosure, hearing Terry Butcher’s leg snap as he went for a 50-50 with a certain Alex Mcleish. Worst I ever saw, though, was in another Rangers-Killie clash - a bl**dy FRIENDLY - also a hastily arranged game, this time because of cancelled league fixtures due to frozen pitches nationwide. It was at Rugby Park and the ever-psychotic Gregor Stevens disgraced himself and our jersey by jumping over the ball and into the shin of a Killie player whose name I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgoten. It was so horrific a case of GBH that I’ve probably tried to discard the memory of the whole incident and only managed to let go of the Killie player’s name. I was 12 at the time and football provided the only public arena in which a child would be allowed to see something as sickening as the hatchet job I witnessed that day.

And that horrible, disgusting noise - that insulting impersonation of a twig breaking in two - was heard again today. The sight and sound literally had me on the verge of vomiting because you knew by everything you saw - right over at the Govan Stand side of the pitch, right below me - that you hadn’t just heard shinpad’s smacking off each other. It seemed to take them an age to get the fu**ing stretcher on.

From what I can remember - and, please, I’m only saying it how I remember it and I’m fully expecting TV pictures may prove me wrong - young Alan was trying to nail Gary Hay. The ball was falling from the sky and the Killie player was favourite to win it as both hurtled towards it from opposite directions. Alan lashed out his leg as Hay extended his toward the dropping ball. Not so much seeking to condemn a Rangers player here as ensuring Hay is completely exonerated for his part in the incident, lest some Rangers nutters take it upon themselves to give him a hard time.

The ferocity of the impact was jarring and the noise made everyone wince. Hay was eventually able to get up. If Alan wans’t so obviously in a very bad way I’m sure he’d have been sent off rather than yellow carded as he lay in agony. Oh man, it was fu**ing horrible, seeing him lying there like that and I’d gladly have seen us down to ten men and maybe going on to drop points in this crucial game if it had meant Alan was just a bit bruised.

This isn’t just talk on my part - this theory was actually put to the test today in some respects because when Mark Walters’ nephew Simon Ford gifted Nacho the second goal of the game, just eight minutes after Alan’s injury, I couldn’t really bring myself to join in the celebrations. Nach and Dado were up milking it from the West Enclosure and it looked almost inappropriate. Of course, it was just the opposite. Alan Hutton broke his leg in the course of trying to win all three points for Rangers - it would have been insulting to him NOT to celebrate the goal he himself wanted so much. But the result really had paled into a shallower significance for me.

Glad Hay is alright and credit to him for being one of the Killie players clearly concerned about Alan.

I don’t want to create a “cult of Hutton” here. There’s a kind of craven tendencey to retrospectively idolise people when they sudenly suffer a serious injury or illlness. Alan Huton is a young man in a lot of pain. That’s where the sympathy starts. He is a professional footballer whose just heard he’ll be out of the game he loves for at least six months. More sympathy. He plays for The Teddy Bears - he’s one of us and he’s in a bad way - so he gets even more of Rangers fans’ thoughts in particular with that. He’s not been around the first team for a decade but he has been a part of the squad for a few seasons and he sealed his reputation as a potential Rangers legend with his performance last week.

There is a genuine worry that we’ve lost a bl**dy good full-back today. He’s out for the rest of this season and I wish him the speediest and fullest recovery possible. The biggest compliment I can pay Alan is the most genuine one I can pay him - he’s a serious loss to our SPL title hopes. Ricksen reverted to the right-back slot today and, despite Alex Rae coming on, there was an immediate and massive loss to our midfield as a result. Maurice Ross just won’t do. We have a real problem here, troops.

And if we hadn’t grabbed that second goal before the interval, that problem could have had instant repercussions. Kilmarnock did get a goal back with quarter of an hour left. Kris Boyd found that Marv and Kyrgiakos weren’t as impregnable as I thought and scored off a corner. Bad. Bad for Rangers to lose such a goal.

The last 15 minutes were tortuous. It shouldn’t be like that. The Gers are six poinst clear at he top of the league - it should always be like that.

All the best, Alan.

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Published:
02.26.05 / 9pm
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