Ach well. (GERS … 1 Super Caley Go Nihilistic … 1)

Mea Culpa. Culpa me.

I don’t care if it is inverted megalomania talking - it was MY fault Rangers dropped those points yesterday.

You read this blog for more than a minute - you know my superstition psychosis. You’ll be acutely aware that any proclamation of positivity from the fat bloke in black (it’s slimming) on the end of this keyboard results in immediate bad results for the slim blokes in blue on the Ibrox pitch.

Took it to a new level yesterday, I did. I really never will learn. The only consolation I can give other Blue-Noses is that my criminally negligent fate-tempting didn’t stop with Crag Dargo’s 81st-minute poached goal at The Brox. Oh No. The Badkarma just went on and on for Yours Bluely. I really have been punished enough. Honest.

To explain:

Was off to a 70th birthday bash on Saturday night. Sorry - What was that? NO - NOT my girlfriend’s! - ha ha, very funny, I DON’T think! No, seriously, her’s is next month ( Well, if ye canae get two 35-year-olds …) but it seemed a real shame to have to leave the PC all on its lonesome for the night because there was just so much happy stuff to talk about on that fine final evening of March 2007.

I mean, first of all, the once-bitter Old Firm divide had closed yet further: Boyd and Beattie got the two goals which took the nation to EURO 2008 glory last Saturday and this week both halves of the Old Infirm scored great free-kicks and then conceded late equalisers to ten men.

Och - everyone was so DARNED happy I just didn’t know if the 27 pints of lager I’d planned to drink at this Septegenarian celebration would even BEGIN to compensate for time away from football chat.

It all started with me wanting to buy myself a cheeky wee jaiket for this birthday do. Marks and Spencers - oh yes, I’m THAT untrendy. A wee sports jacket in a lounge-room lothario stylee. You know, the kind of cheap piece of shite which would still get me a 50-year-old divorcee in the drunken candlelight of Vronis - even if, last night, I was going to a do in a well-lit hotel near Edinburgh.

I’m a fat git. 46-inch chest wasnae big enough and both the M&Ss in Glesgie City centre couldnae provide me with a 48-incher on Friday evening, shopping after work instead of drinking myself stupit. Seemed all was lost on the unfashionable front. Saturday morning. however, began the whirlwind of good fortune which woule eventually lead to my, Rangers’, OUR downfall:

First thing I get is a letter through the post from my bank. Usually a prompt for me to shite myself. But. They’ve been overcharging me for something or other - they apologise for any inconvenience caused and I’m getting a 67quid refund. Very nice.

So, after lunch, off I drives to Marks and Spencers at Braehead shopping centre coz it’s maybe got my size for that jaiket and it’s definitely easy to get to Ibrox from. The Renfrewshire, out-of-town edition of M&S not only has the size 48 but it has about twenty seven different styles of spots jaikets in sed size. Ya fucking byootay!. Daniel Craig, eat yer heart out! I finds one which makes me look slightly less ugly and obese than the rest - fuck me with a Code of Banking Practice of it isnae priced at a mere SIXTY NINE Great British Bucks! What with the letter I’d got in the morning mail, this wee jaiket was costing me a whole TWO QUID.

I drives along tae The Brox, gets a great parking space on Shieldhall Road, alomst half a mile closer tae the ground than I usually manage - the sun is shining and, just before I exit the motor I listen to the injury time commentary from Tannadice. Dundee United sound like they’ve been shite for the whole second half but - BANG! - they equalise in the dying seconds. HIL-AY-REE-US! I wobble fervently in the driver’s seat, cheering like a boxed-in maddo for 30 seconds, hear the final whistle on FM and then head for My Masonic Mecca.

THIRTEEN minutes in, Darren Dods is sent off. Half the stadium isnae expecting it because it was such a stupid but harmless-looking foul and yet, he was the last man and it was Kris Boyd bearing down on goal so the big blonde Caley defender HAS TO GO. We huvnae even digested that great piece of fortune when Charlie Adam slots home a brilliant free-kick from the same award.

And then it happened.

THEN, as we all stood clapping and cheering the goal, angling our heids to see the replay on the Jumbotron screen of our choice, I turned and told my neighbour about the day I’d had and I ended it all with the phrase - “Ye know something - I think this must be my lucky day!”

“… this must be my lucky day!”

“… MY LUCKY DAY!”

“… LUCKY…”

Why?

Why, Eck?

Why, Alexander?

Why the FUCK did you have to actually SAY IT OUT LOUD??!!

Well, truth be told, it’s because it was 30 years ago this Saturday that I attended my first Rangers game. On Monday I celebrate Exactly 30 years as a Rangers fan - 2nd April 1977, Rangers … 2 Hibs .. 1, sat in the centenary stand with my aunt, uncle and wee cuz. Now I was in the Govan Stand built on top of that Centenary stand and, what with everthing that had happened in the hours leading up to the match, I genuinely felt there was some handykarma in the sun-kissed Govan air.

So I said out loud that this must be my lucky day:

Rangers rarely look like scoring a second. Inverness come more and more into the game. Inverness equalise. Not only is the never-really-on miracle League Championship win now not gonnae happen but we’ve re-opened the equally never-really-on prospect of Aberdeen miraculously finishing in second place.

I’m pissed off. We all are. But some arseholes start booing at the final whistle - probably the ones who booed Le Guen and did so much to get Walter Smith re-installed: Well, that’s only the second SPL game ye’ve failed to win in three months, Walter and they’re booing ye: Welcome back, Sir.

I get home, have a bath and realise the 70th birthday bash stars quarter of an hour earlier than I’d realised - in EAST LOTHIAN. I’m doing seventy to eighty along the M8: First time I have to slow don is at the Hermiston Gate roundabout. Ye know, the end of the motorway if you’re travelling from Glesgie to Embra. You know, the big, huge, fuck-off roundabout which is constantly mental-busy with traffic and so they have to have traffic lights there. Well, just before I turned onto the Edinburgh City Bypass South I had to stop at that first set of lights. And the Car died. And it wouldn’t start again. And the whole world was beeping up my fat arse and it turned out not only me but the car had blown a gasket.

Standing on the red gravel island between the two directions of M8 Motorway, hazard lights flashing on a comatose Vauxhall Astra and a sympathetic but distant AA man on the other end of my cellfone. People having to leave the meal and the celebrating to come and get me after I’d had the car towed to a garage in Haddinton (long story). Sickening. Everyone else is eating and drinking - I’m steering a lifeless car behind an AA van, with a Hibs sticker on its dashboard, driven by a great big Hibee car expert who’d said “don’t make me take it back tae glesgie, mate - ah hate fuckin glesgie”.

O lente, lente currite noctis equi!

Eventually join thecelebrations about 10ish. Party’s slowing down. Well, a 70th party should be by that point. I down a few beers on my empty stomach (no driving to worry about!) and even a couple of whiskies. Spend the night in East Lothian, wake up with the flu, garage shut for servicing on a Sunday, have to get the train home from Waverley Station to Glasgow Queen street. At Haymarket a party of neds sits behind me and starts shouting and swearing drunken abuse amongst itself for the delectation of the other passengers, mostly female. The guard tells them to stop swearing, ned number 1 says “When did I swear, like?” and Fat Eck decides it’s time to blow another gasket: It was only after I’d finished thesentence “Since the momen ye got on this fucking train ya wee bawbag, ride,cunt ye” that I realised (a) these lads were about 17 going on 12-years-old, (b) lecturing folk on their language by hitting them with a stream of genetalia-themed expletives is not the best method and (c) we were still only at Falkirk Grahamston so I was gonnae have to argue with these wee bastards all the way tae Queen Street.

The Guard ends up telling ME off for my language (Which continued for a wee while afterwards in the direction of the primary school alkies) and I then have to listen to these wee arseholes doing pretty fucking spot-on impersonations of a car-less, uptight, 37-year-old, 19 and a half stone (Yes - I weighed myself before having my shower in East Lothain this morning) potty-mouth, for a half hour which Rory Bremner and Alistair MacGowan would have been proud of. Couldnae hit them in case they were even younger than I suspetced. And also because they’d have booted mah baws in. Well, MOSTLY because they would have booted mah baws in. But I didn’t leave my seat and move somewhere else on the train because, quite frankly, I deserved all the sovvey-ringed, buckfasted, track-suited verbals I was getting. I deserved it all:

I said it out loud “this must be my lucky day”. I got what was coming to me. I’m just sorry I had to drag Rangers into it.

So, the reflections on the game have just had to wait til April Fool’s Day - and how appropriate that date is for both ME and a team who’ve never scored more than one goal against Caley Thistle at Ibrox, under three different managers!

No. No slagging of the Teds this weekend. More, time to reflect on the great job Walter and Ally and Kenny have done since coming back in. A great run came to a bit of an end on Saturday but it did more to emphasise how great that run has been than begin any witch-hunts. A new manager, brought in with less than a week’s notice, drops only four league points in the first three months of his reign. Well done, Walter and the lads.

Some folk booed The Gers off the pitch but ye’ll always get that at Ibrox - knob-ends, that is. Walter knows this and probably doesnae care. He’ll remember the ingrates from last time. Walter, instead of bemoaning any extraneous factors, apparently just got ripped into the players at full-time for a useless performance and we can pretty much be guaranteed, resurection-like, we’ll destroy the Buddies at Love Street on Easter Sunday. See, that’s not tempting-fate because I’m so GUTTED at our loss of European ambition at Ibrox that my know-how about Waldo’s abilities is all couched in an underlying negativity. My Paisley prediction is just knowledge of what Walter Smith’s teams do in the league - they have one bad result and then they react to it with an all-out deluge of attacking flair, finishing proweess and defensive solidity in the following game.

Stuart McCall said it in the mid-nineties. “Walter and Archie have told us it’s not about the defeat, it’s about how you react to the defeat.”

While some managers like to gripe about how many penalties they haven’t had and try to influence referees on the eve of important games and fail to mention how many penalties their team haven’t had awarded AGAINST them all season, I’ll do like Walter Smith and say “It was our fault - we weren’t good enough on the day - and well done to Inverness”.

Caley were out to stifle Boyd from the get-go. Their decision to pin-point the man who scored a hat-trick against Aberdeen and an opener against Georgia in his previous two Satuday outings was pure common-sense but also resulted in their red-card, Darren Dodds going at it too enthusiatically. But they re-grouped, they battled, they worked like Trojans, did Inverness. And you HAVE to admire them - beating us home and away and drawing away with ten men for most of the game, all in one season v Rangers. None of our other attackers could do anything with the extra space afforded by a ten-man opposition or two of them shackling one striker. I’ve yet to see Caley Thistle do anything less than annoy the shit out Rangers at Ibrox - and I’ve been there EVERY time Caley Thistle have played at Ibrox.

I’ve been at Ibrox a lot over the last 30 years (yup - I will be using that phrase repeatedly now - “As a Rangers fan of more than 30 years, Mr Traynor…”) and the one thing I’ve learned - apart from shut yer fat mouth with the fate-tempting pish - is that the best teams always do it in the league AND Europe and these feats are BECAUSE of each other, rather than in spite of. Anyone thinking the March exit from the UEFA Cup would HELP our “drive” to finish second in the SPL this season saw the damning evidence to the contrary yesterday, at both Ibrox and Tannadice: A team left with only one front to fail on will start failing on that single front.

Settle for second best and you’ll finish third.