Francophobes’ foot-loose fun-fest (Hibees … 3 GERS … 3)

Ahhh - this is the way they wanted it, non?!

Lots of goals, lots of running, lots of celebrating, little organisation, a dearth of tactics and - most of all - absolutely no pressure.

This, ladies and gentlemen of the Season-Ticket renewing jury is what the dressing room revolters of Rangers and Hibernian wanted their games to be like. This is what the training pitch huffmeisters and bar-room smart-arses with the chairman and chief executive on speed-dial on their sponsored mobiles wanted their life to be like when they tried to get rid of their Francophile, or just downright FRENCH, manager:

Sun shining on Leith and games with no teeth. Give me a meaningful 1-1 over a meaningless 3-3 anyday - as long as the 1-1 is a good, pivotal result for us, leading to something truly worthwhile and was achieved with the maximum of effort, discipline and nous.

Hibs kept scoring and we kept equalising. That the Rangers dressing-room revolt actually succeeded is why we’re casually allowing middle-ranking “best of the rest” Scottish sides to knock a trio of goals past us at 3pm on a Saturday. That The Michael Stewart-inspired HIbee staff mutiny was quoshed - kinda - is why Hibs played a new system today and why it was executed by totally obedient players … and why it almost beat Rangers.

Hibs almost beat Rangers. Why should that be so worrying? Hibs are a great club, yes - but in a different league from Rangers. The whole “SPL” thing is a myth. Or, rather, should I say, “SPL 2″ is already here - and Hibs play in it … or Rangers and Celtic ARE it , THE SPL TWO. There’s the top two in Scotland and then you can arrange the rest of the 38 or 40 clubs however else you want.

Rangers failed to finish in the top two last season. It was the first time the Old Firm had been split in the short history of the SPL - it was the first time the SPL ’s top two spots weren’t occupied by Rantic and Celgers. It was the first time in 11 years that Rangers and Celtic had not taken 1st and 2nd, in whatever order, in whatever nomencalture Scotland’s top rung of the footballing ladder was wobbling under. It was the first time in EIGHTEEN years Rangers had finished outside the top two in Scotland’s top league. We’ve never been relegated - we’ve won our league more times than anyone else in the world … in the SIXTEEN Years between Hibernian’s last two League Cup wins, Rangers have won ten LEAGUE TITLES alone - Hibs have been relegated and come back up.

I’m not insulting Hibs. I like Hibs as a rival club. I’m just stating facts. They have less than 9,000 at a Scottish Cup semi-final replay. Two nights later, in the same venue, our youth team THRASHES CELTIC (’s youth team) 5-0 (FIVE- NIL!!!) in front of over 11,000. Our youth team watched by more than their first team. Easter Road is a smashing stadium although one side needs converting to match the other three. If they do it right they could probably get the capacity up to 20,000. This week, David Murray, our Chairman, was talking about adding another 5,000 seats to Ibrox - taking our capacity up to three times that of Easter Road.

So. Do you get the picture? It might have been nice to see six goals today and, like heavily-meaningful huge European nights, meaningless end-of-season fare can sometimes focus you on just how much you love your club and watching your team for its own sake, BUT, when we’re so HUGE and Hibs are so not-quite-huge, there really is no reason for us to be continually coming back from a goal down to snatch a point from them.

We’re another point away from securing the second Champions League spot. That’s in the bag. Jimmy Calderwood should get manager of the season NOW, for having a team as shite and a club as backward as Aberdeen still in arithmetical contention for a Champions League qualifying spot with three games remaining. Those Aberdeen players are so shite they often look stunned themselves when beating Kilmarnock or Motherwell yet again. But they won’t win any of their next two games. Rangers will finish in second spot.

So, in immediate terms, today’s game was completeley meaningless. But it was OH SO meaning-filled in long-term, erm, terms:

First time we played Hibs this season I thought we were gonnae lose 7 or 8-nil. We ended up losing only by 2-1 as Tony Mowbrays charges, who twice did us 3-0 at Ibrox the previous season, hit another of their half-time peaks. Second time we played them in 2006/07, Rangers put in our best performance of the season - we destroyed them 3-0 at Ibrox and, in a total turnaround, WE looked as if we’d win by 7 or 8. We were immense. Sublime. For once, most of Ibrox joined me in singing Barry Ferguson’s name.

Before that first Easter Road clash of this campaign, our backroom staff had stupidly confessed in a passing conversation with their Hibernian opposite number that the Rangers players were all totally knackered, so hard were they being trained by Paul Le Guen. This was in August. By October, Hibs couldn’t get near us, so fit were we, so obviously had that finess training paid off. But the other important difference in this season’s only Ibrox meeting of Rangers and Hibs was the fact Paul le Guen had allowed his players to play a straight 4-4-2 - a formation not beyond their ken. It was a temporary compromise, one felt, along the half-way road to a total overhaul of the Murray Park culture. Extra fitness training, an aloof manager AND scarily cerebral tactics were too much for the established dominators of the dressing room to take on board. So Le Guen decided to let them have an old-fashioned 4-4-2 to themselves so they could at least appreciate the value of the fitness training.

We slaughtered Hibs in October and their new manager in the away dug-out at Ibrox that day, Monsiuer John Collins, knew why: He’d played in European Semis and became a multi-millionaire while at AS Monaco, crossing playing swords with one Paul le Guen.

Collins wanted French tactics, health regimes and DISCIPLINE brought to Easter Road. France have won the World Cup, The European Championship and played another World Cup final, all in the last nine years - so the French are probably a good set of footballers to imitate in their on and off-field habits.

This season, under their new, Frenchified gaffer, Hibs won their second League Cup in sixteen years and then the players turned against that manager’s style. And for a while it seemed as if they might get rid of him. Their recent failings in the League and Scottish Cup are down to this ruction but Collins has won the day - the day of chaos so necessary for any truly worthwhile change to take place - and waiting another year for a Scottish Cup they haven’t won in over a century will be small price to pay if Collins overhauls the Scottish ways: The Easter Road rebellion was instigated during a bevvy session in an Ediburgh boozer for fucks sake!.

Rangers qualified for Europe beyond Christmas for only the third time in thirteen years this season before our own squalid little dressing room revolt. Just as winning a major domestic trophy is the be-all and end-all for Hibernian FC, so European success is the holy grail for Rangers FC. A taste of their dream was enough to tell the Hibs fans to back Collins for the long-term. A taste of our supposed heart’s desire, at Edmiston Drive, was still not enough to prevent The Gers fans deciding Barry Ferguson - a man who couldn’t handle the cultural shift from Lanarkshire to Lancashire - knew more about how Rangers should be run than some bilingual foreign bloke with a degree in economics, a European Cup-winners’ cup medal in his pocket and a habit of winning the French League title.

I play Five-a-sides of a Thursday. I”m shite - really shite - but I do know enough to get by. We couldn’t have the regular game last Thursday so half of us put a team together to play a bunch of wooses from the “corporate” section of the over-bloated organisation stupid enough to pay me a wage.

These guys turned up in their little hot pants, self-cloured Marks and Spencer’s tee-shirts and bobby socks. It was all white gym shoes and sweat-bands - I couldn’t decide if they looked more like a badminton club or a fucking Aerobics class. We had about five years youth on most of them and with a side comprising two Ibrox season-ticket holders, two Parkhead season-ticket holders and an Inverness Caley exile with more nouse, guile and deceptive speed than most fives teams need between them, our team , in our JJB sports’ £10-bin replica fitbaw strips, Adidas and Nike top-of-the range bits, spiky hair-dos and occassional shin pad, would have been every neutral observer’s bet to wipe the floor with these geeks.

But those Geeks go to the gym every night - and I think they must jog to the gym and back - and the geeks play fives every Wednesday and they play the same tactic, based on speed, fitness and simple inter-changing of positions according to whether they have the ball or, as happened only rarely last Wednesday, they opposition has it. No fancy individual footwork or hacking the shit out of someone’s calves. These boys don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t eat kebabs and know only how to kick a ball in a forward direction. If you want to hit it to your own goalie, you turn your body 180 degrees and kick it a bit more gently than you do when you don’t recognise the goalie from any dinner parties you host for the boys on the fifth floor. No flicks or back-heels. Just plenty of time and space.

The wooses destroyed us.

My mates might have known how to play exhibition football - but the geeks were too fit to let us do that - they just played winning football. Seems like my mates and I will have to either get fit or spend our time looking for teams even shiter than us so we can have a wee footballing wank to ourselves once a week.

John Collins doesn’t want the wanky thing for Hibs and Paul le Guen didn’t want it for Rangers. They were only interested in doing the REAL business on the field. If you don’t have the money for the greatest players then you’ll only scale the heights with fitness discipline and smarter tactics - oh, and a fan base who appreciate why you should be allowed to do it.

Well done, Alan Hutton - that goal was sublime and well deserved. Well done Charlie Adams - you score so many goals away from home and you score so many of them at Easter Road. But, most of all, well done Hibernian FC and their supporters - for letting worthy, long-term ambition win the day over instant, cheap gratification.

… and for keeping it French.

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Published:
04.28.07 / 7pm
Category:
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