Home is where the Hearts fail (GERS …2 Jambos …1)

Sorry. If I believed like Big Marvin did then I’d be focussing on the positives - barely bothering to let the negatives even register. But when the big man scores for both teams in the same game you can see my reservations about a policy of blind faith.

There’s a good chance it could end the possibility of a 51st title for Rangers this season but next week’s visit of Motherwell will at least conclude the cardiac-jangling torture which sitting in our season ticket seats has become.

26th of February 2005. That’s the last time we managed more than a single goal at Ibrox. For a man who began the season complaining about the remorseless inevitability of Rangers beating everyone except Celtic on our own patch, I have a nerve to be bitching about the fact we can hardly manage a draw in Govan this last three months.

But I did litter said late summer rant with caveats along the lines of “winning IS everything” and “I never want to go back to the days when Rangers were struggling to finish fourth”. Basically I hoped that any incursion on the Old Firm duopoly of the last decade would result from improvement in the rest of the SPL. It hasn’t. Rangers and, thankfully, Celtic have gone backwards. Excitement and quality aren’t necessarily the same but, in the current race for the title, the two seem to be mutually exclusive.

Hearts did nothing for an hour yesterday. They did little more than nothing for the closing half hour but, as with that 2-1 home over Kilmarnock in the last weekend of February, it only takes a very minimal something to have Rangers rocking on their heels for the final ten minutes of a game they simply MUST win. The closer we get to the kind of levels of achievement which Rangers fans find acceptable, the closer this Rangers side comes to implosion.

We have to go back to the 12th of February this year to find one of those comfortable home Rangers wins which for the last few years have been relentlessly the norm. That 3-0 defeat of Hibs - a side which, ironically, now offers the best hope for a non Old Firm league champion in the next decade - seems like a distant memory. But ever since McLeish arrived at Ibrox, the easy home win has been his speciality. Going in at the break two goals up, the first usually scored within ten minutes of kick-off, was the trade-mark McLeish homer.

Strangley, the one away result he couldn’t get - the all important victory at Parkhead - was the result which changed our venue-based form. Ever since the 20th February win at Breezeblock Boulevard Rangers have struggled, full stop, but its been at home where the wobbles have been most profoundly vibrative. Inverness Caley score a late equaliser into the Broomloan. Dundee United win 1-0 with an early goal into the Copland. Celtic win 2-1 with us reduced to going in two down at half-time and playing the part of potential party-pooper with a late strike into the Copland.

So when The Gers were 1-0 up after eight minutes yesterday and then 2-0 up at the break, the next goal would tell us how we’d play out the season. Would it be a continuation of the jittery stumbling over hurdles? Or would it be a return to the free-flowing goal-fests of pre-March?

Particularly when the goals were borne of such rabble-rousing inspiration, Ibrox was ready to receive it’s heroes back at their full all-action best. But we went the other way. Hearts were given a goal with 9 minutes left and it was that Kilmarnock game, in which Kris Boyd pulled it back with 14 minutes left, all over again - hoping against hope that we wouldn’t let in a late equaliser, sweating when there was should have been no need for us to be perspiring at all.

Wee Nach - a man in need of a goal - did everything except score in teeing Buffel up for the opener. He slalomed through the Jambos defence then poked the ball round a last defender and outpaced him to the other side. One-on-one with Gordon, he dinked it over the keeper and Ibrox held it’s breath. Webster denied the Spaniard the goal of the season but Buffel nodded home the clearence to ensure Rangers wouldn’t be denied the lead.

A half in which the referee caused us more worries than Hearts was ended in fine style when Big marv, up for a corner, loitered about during the stramash and was on hand to direct Buffel’s 18-yarder over the line. “I’m a Believer” echoes from the PA system and The Blue Order unfurled the “Keep Believeing” banner while Marv offered thanks to the great man upstairs - and God.

David Murray may have been as inspired as I was by the beautiful sight at half time of the Blue Order’s Bill Struth flag (Congratualtions to Follow Follow and the Blue Order: Beautiful, folks - absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t see it during the sellik game coz I’m up the back of the Govan but it’s a magnificent achievement) becoming the central panel of a Broomloan Front triptych. The saltire and the Lion rampant featuring so predominantly behind Struth’s presidential form was a reminder that our greatness is based on dominating Scotland. To do this we’ll need to hope someone else in Scotland can dominate Celtic for ninety SPL minutes this month. And we’ll have to hope this was Rangers’ worst performance for the whole of May 2005.

Hearts made a couple of substitutions and a free-kick into our box was almost inevitably turned in by the man whose name we’d all been belting out just before the break. Hearts had got that “next” goal and instead of going 3-0 up Rangers were back to inducing mass bowel movements for the remaining nine minutes. We did hit the bar twice in the second half - Buffel was probably man of the match but continues, for me, to look like a poor Ronald de Boer impersonator - but we haven’t hit the heights for the last three months on home soil.

Even worse is the news that Hearts will only get worse for next weekend’s visit of the hooped hordes. Just when we need the Jambos to be at their best, Hearts are on the verge of sacking a manager who clearly knows what he’s doing. Even the arrival of celtic at Tynecastle is unlikely to remove the depression such a cowardly internecine move will create in the maroon dressing room.

Celtic will beat Aberdeen today because, even though their own home form has nose-dived this season, Celtic at least know how to win the ones that matter. At present, Rangers only seem to waver when it matters: The more Rangers fans they play in front of the worse they get - thank God we play our last game of the season at Easter Road.

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Published:
06.26.05 / 2pm
Category:
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