ANORAK HEAVEN(Bairns … 1 GERS … 3)

Confession time: This was my first visit to Falkirk’s new stadium.
Boast time: There are now no league grounds in Scotland to which I haven’t been.
Fact time: This was a healthy test and solid enough result before Stuttgart.

Think this was maybe the fifth time The Gers have played at Brockville Mark II and Yours Bluely had conspired with his wallet and his stamina to miss every previous visit by his club to the Grangemouth blast site. But the waiting just made today all the sweeter.

I don’t do every single away game anymore. Never miss a home game and probably manage between a third and a half of all non-Ibrox Gers games in a campaign. Mostly down to money - sometimes down to other stuff. But when at the peak of my “LOYALTY”, I always resented the fact there were certain Scottish stadia I would probably never get to with Rangers.

No-one has a divine right to avoid relegation - but we’ve largely managed it. As a youth I clung to the hope of the domestic cup draws granting me the chance to Follow-Follow up and down roads less travel-travelled by. I was always an anorak at heart and while Rangers are my life support - my oxygen, my heart-beat - every other aspect and asset of the game consumed my imagination: If it was worth visiting a town, it was essential to visit its biggest fitbaw ground. How else could you really judge a place, after all?! And when I looked through the classified scores each Sunday, I’d study the attendances at every Scottish and English game and wonder what it would be like to BE THERE, at that ground, with those other 671 fans.

Mostly I would wonder what those grounds looked like and what songs the home fans would sing. Every ground has its own unique matchday experience and I wanted to sample them ALL. Then Scottish Cup 3rd Round week would come along; Sportscene’s highlights pacakge would allow me tantilisng glimpses of the Glebe Park hedge, the Shielfield park Speedway track, or the waves crashing over the terracing at Gayfield. Being a bit of a completist, and a total fibaw nut, I wanted to stand on those terraces, sit in those stands, get jagged by those over-sized shrubs. But health and safety matters changed - for the betterment of public safety but for the worsening of my chances of sating my stadia addiction:

I had enjoyed some personal anorak satisfaction as a school-age saddo, seeing Bobby Russell score for us in a League Cup quarter-final at Cowdenbeath’s Central Park was bloody great fun. By the time I left school I’d seen Rangers play at the big Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh venues more often than I’d eaten Sugar Puffs. The other standards - Fir Park, Love Street, Cappielow, Pittodrie, Rugby Park etc - were becoming as regular a feature of my nascent adulthood as plukes, Morrisey and trying to dress like Don Johnson (coz ALL THE GIRLS LOVE MIAMI VICE!). So attending smaller venues - like when Dumbarton came up to the premier Division in 1984/85 - was a genuine buzz. Seeing Ted McMinn score direct from a corner at Boghead is still more memorable to me than many of the run-of-the-mill wins we enjoyed over Dundee United at Ibrox in those days.

I dunno, maybe it was because Rangers were SHITE in the early-to-mid-eighties. Maybe it was this that allowed me to fall in love with the whole of Scottish football rather than just remaining completely Rangers-centric in my head as well as my heart. Perhaps the constant stream of coruscating pain endured through endless mid-table finishes and humiliating European (or ANGLO-SCOTTISH CUP!!) calamities forced my subconscious to tell my conscious to give myself a break. I needed football like a rose needs the rain but I could only take so much heart-break. I went to every Rangers game - the worse we got, the more intensely I followed on. But I think the need to find some joy, ANY JOY from this footie obsession may have sparked the need to branch off into less emotionally invested areas of the game. I let “general football interest” take hold - not instead of Rangers but as a side issue, as a saver. Gers lost at Clydebank on the Satrday? Fuck it, have a read at the match reports on the Sunday then, before ye start crying, go through the classifieds and tick off all the grounds ye haven’t been to yet.

Why or how it happened is unclear but while anyone who loves a team is bound to have even a passing interest in the wider aspects of the game, I wanted to know something about EVERYTHING to do with fitbaw. And, unlike others, I followed through on my little wonderings about, for example, “if there’s a bitter derby atmosphere at a Forfar-Montrose game”: It was stadia for me: I wanted to go to everywhere I hadn’t been already. In Scotland at least, that was achievable. I bought Simon Inglis’ first Football Grounds of Gerat Britain and that completed the fascination with ground-hopping.

But those damn Health and Safety laws, Taylor Reports and what have you, meant that when Rangers DID now draw a Stirling Albion or a Stenhousemuir in the League or Scottish Cup, they’d move the game to Brockville. Meadowbank moved it to Tynecastle, Hamilton to Fir Park and my anorak hopes would be dashed at every turn. Of course, most of the time, these “smaller” clubs weren’t switching these games for safety considerations but it WAs something to do with the large size of the Rangers support they expected - they switched the venues of these games for FINANCIAL reasons:

East Fife drew us at home in this season’s League Cup. Twenty years ago they took us to penalties in the same competition at Old Bayview. I didn’t go. School night or something. They knocked it down and I never got. Kills me to this day. Just like Muirton Park, Perth and Anfield Park - Stirling Albions’ old ground - I never went to any of these venues and its still haunts me more personally than the tree-populated terraces of old Cathkin Park and the vacated bowl which was Kilbowie still haunt those who want to build new Scottish stadia. But I did go to see East Fife at their new stadium, which is a hell of a lot safer than Old Bayview I’d imagine … but the buggers still moved this season’s Cup game woth The Gers to East End Park, Dunfermlne. Because New Bayview only has ONE wee stand, and Dunfermline’s ground has four big uns. Safety and MONEY now means Rangers will more often than not play wee teams on neutral venues.

Luckily, this aspect of the Scottish game came into being just as Sky was taking an interest in Calcio Caledonia. Soon Rangers were playing Every Other SUNDAY. I love my fitbaw on a Saturday afternoon - that’s how I was raised - so this was an opportunity to start doing the anorak thing more intently. Gers game on a Sunday? - ground I’d never been to on a Saturday. In 1992 my mate and I’d nipped along to Firs Park, Falkirk to see East Stirling. That was the day I really started GOING FOR IT. And, do you know … It took fucking YEARS to complete the set for the first time! Fucking hell - most of the time I just didn’t have the money to do two games a weekend - and Rangers would always take precedence.

But eventually, I climbed that anal-retentive K2: I’d been to Forfar v Montrose, I’d seen Brechin v East Fife, I’d been down to Shielfield for Berwick v Queens Park in the same season I’d followed the Wee Rangers to Stranraer in the cup - Stair Park off the list (and I got a touch of the ball in both games!!) - Palmerston Park, Dumfries was beautiful; Links Park, Montrose was unbelievably sterile (a real shock in Angus which, otherwise, has the sweetest collection of grounds in the country) … and on and on we went until, one day, my mate and I got a chance to return to Recreation Park, Alloa. We went onece before and the game got called off when we were on the fucking bus out there from Stirling. We went back to the same Falkirk-crazy Alloa boozer where the bar man had previously taken great delight in answering our enquiries for directions to the game with a gleeful “what game??!! - there’s nae game today - HOPE YE HUVNAE COME FAR!!” in front of his pie-eyed sycophantic regulars. And, after watching Any Walker chip in a Nehoda-Style penalty against Stranraer, we celebrated having been to every league ground in Scotland and having seen every club in the land with full league status.

(Well, truth be told, we had one “sense-of-closure” pint in there then caught the bus back to Stirling sharpish to do some real celebrating: Who the fuck wants to be stuck in Alloa on a Saturday night? MAN, it’s grim!)

Apart from the Alloa incident there’d been other set-backs and annoying shit along the way to anorak heaven: Mostly when whe’d get off the train after an all-day trip to Dingwall to discover Rangers had just drawn them away in the next round of the League Cup!! But there were plenty highs too - other than the touches of the ball at the two Berwick games (I chipped it over the wee fence at Stranraer - beautiful footwork for a big guy), like being at Dumbarton for their first ever game at their new Strathclyde homes Stadium, seeing Paddy Connolly scoring the first ever goal at this new, dramatically-loctaed home of the first ever outright champions of Scotland and then having my innermost thoughts about this smashing new venue published in the Dumbarton programme for the game which marked the official opening … Versus RANGERS! Fucking honour.

That was a top-up ground-hop, the Dumbarton trip. The best day was when we were in the pub, after Alloa v Stranraer, knowing we’d done it - every ground in Scotland. The thought then was we could just dissapear back into our immediate lives after that - no more wacky “quests” to keep us out the pub on a Sans-Rangers Saturday.

But then they let Peterhead and Elgin into the league. And Falkirk eventually moved outta Brockville.

I nipped along to the Shyberry Exelsior one day, so I could say I’d seen Airdrie UNITED after the death of Airdrieonians. I have a mate who was forced to move up to Aberdeen - his Dad drove us along to see Peterhead in the Scottish Cup. I was topping-up the lists whenever I could be arsed. But Elgin I just couldn’t get round to. It is Sooo fucking far away … and they tended to play their home games on the same weekends The Teds were at Ibrox. They have done for years. Trust me - I looked at their fixtures almost every week.

And Falkirk I just couldn’t get a ticket for or, if we were playing them in a pre-season friendly where Lee McCulloch scored his first goal for the club, I’d still be laid out in my bed, half-cut, when Big Lee was knocking the ball into the net after a minute and the pay-as-you-enter turnstyles were clicking to the tune of “Eck? Where are you ….?”

In fairness, I think a part of me knew I could see Rangers at Falkirk whenever I wanted really (today’s brief, for example, was a string-pulled) but I was never likely to see The Teds at Borough Briggs. So I wanted to do Elgin first, against anyone, on purely anorak terms, leaving me able to complete every league ground in Scotland WHILE WATCHING THE RANGERS.

On the 23nd September 2007 we were at home to Aberdeen. That was a Sunday. Elgin City v East Stirlingshire was the Saturday, 22nd: Car. Petrol. Early morning departure. Drive - beautiful weather - beautiful wee park - 6-0 Elgin - home via the Perth road and some of the most amazing countryside I’ve ever seen in this country. Got back in time for a check of the Falkirk fixture list and a wee sesh in Glasgow. My mate now maintains that the best way to shut-up an over-chatty Glasgow cabbie is answering his enquiry as to what you’ve been up to tonight by saying “My mate and I were just celebrating travelling up to the Highlands to see Elgin v East Stirling. You?”.

I could’ve gone to Falkirk’s new pad anytime over the past couple of years. But It was today I was waiting for. Mixing the anorak with the maniac, the stats with The Gers, the anal with the animal, the life with the love.

Yup, all those previous rambling, meandering paragraphs about stuff which probably means fuck-all to most Bluenoses out there, were just to let you know that it wasn’t only Rangers who hit a wee milestone today, securing their biggest-ever win at The Falkirk Stadium, but the fat self-obsessed git who writes this wee blog also enjoyed a bit of a result:

There’s no more to do. No more left. Like the Seven Samurai when they finally scare off the bandits, flailing in the mud and rain of the village, crying because they’ve won but also because they’ve come to the end of their purpose, I’ve completed one of my longest-running anorak ambitions:

Done all three of the European Club finals. And now I’ve done every league ground in Scotland - again - all I need now is to see every oter football stadium on the planet and get to the World Cup final. And I might stop.

Either that or see The Gers win the champions League and I just die on the spot, knowing it’ll never be the same again.

If it’s all about the journey, rather than the getting there, then (a) thank fuck St Mirren will be moving to their new stadium shortly and (b) today was a LOVELY destination.

Okay the Rangers performance was as bitty as the stadium - smashing on two sides, a bit ramshackle on the third and fucking non-existant in the fianl part. But there’s nothing nicer than scoring an injury-time clincher and there’s nothing sweeter than wrapping up all three points when you’ve been troubled enough by the opposition to get a taste of what’d be like to lose two of those precious points.

Rangers have been shakey on the road this season. Today we were less than convincing in many aspects but thorougly convincing in the most important - the score-line, the result.

The A-team got us 2-goals ahead and the B-team, Naysmith and Boyd, came on to restore that two-goal lead just when it looked in serious danger of being wiped-out altogether. As, apparenty, would be an East Stand if Grangemouth’s huge plant exploded. The reason there’s fuck-all behind the little agricultural fete temporary seating at New Brockville, nothing except a strangley chemical -looking field, is that planning laws for the area in which the stadium is situated draw the line of potential explosive fall-out from Grangemouth’s industrial monstrosity at somewhere like the linesman’s head on that side of the Falkirk pitch.

I’m sure there’s been some sort of deal struck but, having begun the ground-hopping mission at Firs Park, Falkirk, ended it in a Falkirk-friendly town like Alloa and then ending it for a second time back in Falkirk itself, I couldn’t help thinking there was a symbolic symmetry to the stadium and the day itself: It pissed with rain, the sun came out, it was cold, it was widy but we were mostly dry and warm ENOUGH. THIS is Scottish football. Far from perfect but enough to get by on. The ground has two very modern, very adequate and perfectly aesthetically pleasing stands - it’s go-ahead, ambitious and modern when viewed from the south-east corner in which Setanta cunningly locate their pundits box at Falkirk. But the other fifty percent of the stadium shows the lie behind the top-heavy ambition of Caledonian club fitbaw - on one side there’s that dainty but ridiculous-looking doll’s house temporary stand. It does the job and is better than nothing but it’s not gonnae be seen in UEFA cmpetition anytime this century. And at the south end of the ground there IS nothing … Just hoardings, with double-decker buses in the car-park behind. Behind that there’s a railway line where the huge chemical cargo goes to and from Granemouth. Behind that there’s cargo containers, piled-up like the scene from Heat where Pacino reslises De Niro is watching HIM rather than the other way around. Behind that there’s a rising hill of bargain private housing and bought council houses. There’s a main road and the cars go by as if the game doesn’t matter.

On top of the wee temporary stand are all the flags of all the nationalites who ply their trade for the Falkirk Bairns. Trinidad and Tobago, Austria, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Scotland and England - it’s like a scene from the 1930s - a posh pavillion at a Horse of the Year show - faced by a grandiose, modern main stand. It is, in fact, Falkirk faced by Rangers. And we, the big plush shiney ones, prevailed.

Before kick-off, as sun fought with rain and the players warmed up in their anti-bigotry training tops, I felt this was the perfect place to again end my years-long journey round Scotland’s grounds. Roy Carroll - a cracking bloke from what I could see - was doing his keepy-ups and swapping banter and handshakes with the Bears. All this because you can walk around in the open space in front of the stand, behind the pitch. The built stands are big enough for modern viewing but the lay-out allows the players and fans to mix in a real, almost literal return to gress-roots. The players’ pre-match shooty-in session resulted in Daniel Cousin exploding one seat to smitherenes just below the area in which I was sat. But it also saw plenty Gers punters given the cance to boot the ball back to their favourites. One wee Bear got so into it his Timberland boot followed the ball over the back of the net. Everyone’s pissing themselves - he’s go a beamer - Charlie Adam is still tryng to curl in a 40-yarder, oblivious. That’s what it’s all about - bringing fans and players together.

The layout at Falkirk also helped bring the fans closer to that female production asisstant on Setanta’s outside Broadcast unit who wears the very tight jeans. There were surprisngly few wolf whistles and shouts, considering the size of the crowd, but there were still far too many. We all see it, lads but, please, can we kick sexism out the game too - it’s just another form of bigotry.

Like Westfield, Rangers ain’t the finished article but wee too are headed in the right direction. Unlike Alan Hutton, who headed in the wrong direction, the bottom corner of his own goal, to bring out the second of two classy saves from Alan McGregor. Sat in the roomy and comfy North Stand, with it’s steel-work buttresses under the curved roof echoing the Falkirk Wheel, I had pehnomenal views of all the action right in front of me: Cuellar’s looping header for our first goal, and our goalie’s two get-out-of-jail tip-aways as we struggled to keep the Bairns from taking 2-0 to 2-1. Darche scored our second at the other end and, as good a view as you have, the all-white wall behind that goal, and the complete lack of humans, obliterates clear sight of events - but both Darche and Boydy were given such On-a-plate service that there was no doubt where their shots had ended up.

We had a great view of the goal we conceded too. Suddenly the Falkirk players looked bigger, faster and hungrier. This galls some Rangers fans but, for me, having shipped so many points on the road this season, I was glad at the fortitude we displayed. By the end we’d actually smacked Falkirk back into their place.

And I really was chuffed to be at their place.