So Huns in Europe! Oh there are so Huns in Europe! - so Huns in yoooooooorope, oh …

Aw man, I just can’t stop thinking about it. Can you? Lovely, isn’t it. Absolutely beautiful.

Every little thing I’ve done today has been couched in the memory of that strike. A memory so recent and, I don’t know - what’s the opposite of “traumatising”? Can you be POSTIVELY traumatised? I keep having flash-backs which well the tears up but they’re tears of happiness - so much richer than anything else likely to happen in the next few days and weeks that I feel like it’s still happening. The memory of the celebrations - the phenomenal Dream-Come-True emotion which exploded among the Bluenoses as Ross McCormack drove home - has made a half-day battle with tiredness more like an extension of that lovely post-coital bliss: You celebrate your tiredness because the reason behind it is so sweet: And, gawd knows, seeing The Rangers “pull it off” in Europe is getting as rare as a bit of coitus for Yours Blueley! :-)

Let’s savour the flavour.

Staggered out my bed after 1pm, showered, shaved, weetabixed and headed in to work for a half day. Everyone’s asking you about the game, the result, the day, the trip. And, for once, you don’t have to temper your invective. You don’t have to tread carefully when describing how bad the performance was, lest you offend a kindly inquiry from a casually interested colleague - usually female, usually middle-aged - who just wants to show she cares about your well-being: She doesn’t deserve to hear “they were fu**ing PISH! - A disgrace tae the FU**ING JERSEY! I’m fu**ing SICK of watching that shower of green-and-white SHITE running away with our league …”. No. That well-meaning colleague doesn’t deserve that at all. These innocent bystanders deserve better and today they got all the pleasantries in the world.

Today, the morning after the day and night before, every Bluenose in the world could just GLOW.

That equaliser will go down in the annals of Rangers folklore. We’ve grown realistic enough, through bitter experience, to know that we shouldn’t worry too much about how the entire contextualising season pans out before eulogising any one particular game. If we can only muster a great MOMENT in Europe every few years then that’s what we’ll cherish. And from now on, right up there with that breakaway in Leverkusen, that deflected volley from Vidamr against Parma, that counter-attack at Elland Road, I’m cherishing the 86th minute in Do Dragao, on 23rd November 2005. I’m gonnae cherish it forever, young Ross. Cheers mate.

The move leading up to that heavenly equaliser was typical of the way Rangers seem to want to score goals these days - almost walking the ball in. We seemingly have to exhaust every possible passing option before we finally get on with the apparently crude business of actually getting the thing over the line and into the net. But, for once, that build-up was tantalising fore-play not to inevitable frustration but to ultimate ecstasy.

Steven Thompson, as usual, will get no credit for his presence but he made their centre-half unable to direct his header properly. Soti’s high free-kick was instead only repelled as far as Ross McCormack. He shaped to shoot for a nano-second before cleverly and cooly playing Nando up the right wing. In a game where we did absolutely nothing of an attacking nature this was already a revelation of a move. What you have to remember is this was all taking place directly in front of a HUGE Rangers support - a support which has, for most of this season, just been saying “we are here - no matter what”. Most of us don’t even dare hope we’ll ever get the kind of break other teams and pundits talk about or that our manager embarrassingly pleaded for in a few post-match interviews this season. We take it all on the chin and never solicit the help of outside agencies.

Every other “Big” club in the land, from Man U right down to celtic, seem to be desperate to have us believe they’re tragic little victims of a big bad cosnpiring world. Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Martin O’Neill all make an art form of inverting the fucking obvious - the media laps it up coz it makes good copy and appeals to the greetin of these clubs’ huge numbers of spoiled, delusional fans. Rangers, to my rib-bursting pride, never pretend to be anything other than a huge club which makes its own mistakes and blames itself for doing so. We’re too big to ask for sympathy - and we’re just too darned classy. In my book, that actually makes us more deserving. In my book, that makes it all the more heart-renderingly glorious when we finally get something we haven’t dared hope for.

As Rickers crossed to the back post it gave us enough time to let that self-awareness of our desperation eek out into the open. Knowing you’re shite, knowing your team has no chance, is actually easy to live with. It’s depressing but it’s pretty simple to channel emotionally. It’s only when there’s a sign of hope that you open yourself up for real gutting, slashing pain. When Chris Burke got to that ball of Nando’s, kept it in, headed it back into the middle of the box, there was no chance for anyone in Rangers colours to “keep it real” any longer - we’d all been shown too much on the pitch in the course of this move, the floodgates of wild optimism were flung open before us. The hope welled up, breached its banks and cascaded down that lovely Do Dragao stand and into the heart of the penalty area.

We broke it all down in our minds’ eye. We looked for something to remind us of the recent tribulations - something to ground us emotionally. But there was nothing there except a big annoying reason for hope. All that could be seen was a Rangers player with the ball at his feet and a Porto defence all at sea in front of him. Pragmatic pessimism just evaporated. If Ross’d missed, there would have been more mercy if we’d all just been shot. We didn’t so much dare to hope as we were press-ganged into it by events in front of us.

Ross McCormack shot. Ross McCormack scored. A long, shitty season came pouring out our throats.

Not a nice image? Nope. That’s why the celebrations which followed had more than just an innocent air of undaluterated joyousness. All the draws with Aberdeen, Artmedia, Livingston - the two defeats to Celtic. That needed something massive for it to be wiped out our thoughts and it couldn’t go quietly. What took place in Rangers hearts as Ross McCormack scored was the emotional equivelant of the lancing of a boil. It was sharp, painful poison-letting - a gutteral roar - followed by endless relief.

In the beautiful city of Paris in early December 2001, in a magnificent example of how pre-stressed concrete stadia can actually look sensational, Rangers wore all-white with red socks and fought out a goalless draw which led to us qualifying for Europe after Christmas - all with a manager who was on his way out.

In the stunning city of Porto, almost exactly four years later, in a venue which resembles the concrete mother ship of an alien invasion, Rangers wore all-white with a red stripe and fought out a draw which takes us past Christmas in Europe - despite Alex McLeish’s inevitable departure.

What a sensational night.

Sometimes you want a goal so badly that you don’t care how it comes. Sometimes your team have offered so little in attack that, by the 85th minute, you’ve forgotten they are actually allowed to score. Thank Goram for Chris Burke and Ross McCormack - two guys I’ve said aren’t Rangers class. Thank Goram for Alex McLeish’s decision to bring them on after our near-prefect attempt at a goalless draw had come undone - Eck is a man we’ve all criticised this season.

But the under-appreciated trio - spectacularly assisted by the equally wasted-on-some-of-us Ronald Waterreus - combined to pull off one of this club’s most important results in recent times. Alex McLeish continues to pull it out the bag - for a man so unwanted by the fans of the club he manages, he seems to have provided an inordinate amount of tear-jerkingly emotional moments for us.

Our support yesterday was MAGNIFICENT - and that watching wee Ross knock that ball past Vitor Baia, to send me flying down the steps of sector 24 in Norte I of the AMAZING Do Dragao stadium was yet another triumph for the dignity and single-mindedness of Alex McLeish and a sign that Follow Following in the numbers we do isn’t always as unappreciated as we might be tempted to think.

This was a magical ocassion, troops. Wasn’t it just fu**ing LOOOOOOOVELY! And though the game was almost as bad as the result was great - another testimony to the team and the manager, for they knew they HAD to destroy it as a spectacle to take a point - all the poetry neeed to mark this occassion was provided by the beautiful city of Oporto and the majority of the Bears who revelled there.

The Shawlands “Brothers in Blue” Union Jack, which I saw those guys risk life and limb to sling up in the Praca da Ribeira, may not be as famous or beautiful a creation as Gustave Eiffel’s magnificent Ponte De Louis, straddling the amazing Douro river - but the two of them combined to make this an even more magical day than even the result dictated.

I’m still recovering - must get to my bed - I’ll tell ye all about it in another update.