Scintillating Gers Coruscate Clear! (Gretna … 1 GERS … 2)

Yes, the headline is sarcastic. Just a wee bit. This win was hairyer than Andy Fordham’s forearms but frankly - and it’s already time for my favourite phrase of 2007/2008 - CONSIDERING WHERE WE WERE THIS TIME LAST YEAR or, if you prefer, CONSIDERING THE STATE OF OUR CLUB AFTER OUR LAST NARROW JANUARY WIN AT FIR PARK, I really don’t care how we did the business tonight. The fact we did it is enough. At this juncture, more than ever, the three points are all we need. Winning five - nil and wiping out Celtic’s goal difference advantage while we were at it would have been nicer but the three points was what it was all about. Twenty games gone, less than half the season remaining, half-way through the first month of the freshly-turned year: RANGERS ARE FOUR POINTS CLEAR AT THE TOP.

With just twelve months under his come-back belt, Walter won’t be bothering about the style: He’ll just get us winning the league first - we’ll worry about the window dressing in June. In fact, now that I’ve had three large donners and two bags of chips (Can of coke with each portion - family pack of Mars Bars for dessert) in order to restore the bucketloads of sweat I lost in the freezing South Stand this evening, I can say I’m GLAD we struggled like hell in this clash with the bottom-feeders of the SPL. Yes - GLAD! I mean, think about it - had we banged in three goals each side of the break and kept Gretna in their own half for 92 minutes, there’s a danger we’d think we’re world-beaters. There’s a danger the Bears would have gone into full party mode and think it was all wrapped up: We’d forget just how much work is still to be done or exactly how much Waldo’s improved the situation over the last year. (Did I mention he’s just been back in the job for a year?)

We’re semi-comfortably top of the league and, after qualifying for and seriously competing in the Champions League, we’re now in the business end of the UEFA cup and Celtic haven’t scored against us for over one calendar year. Walter’s brought all this in far too short a period for it all to be built on solid foundations. Some of the achievements have been propped up by The Divine Cardigan’s tactical and inspirational experience. We’re back at our acceptable level of existence but it could all come crumbling down from beneath if we get cocky about it.

No such danger at Fir Park the nicht. A lot of the Bears were howling at Cousin for the first 74 minutes and also Walter was getting it whenever we struggled - which was often. The Red, White and Blue hordes (if ye can count two “fullish” stands and two dozen more bears sprinkled between the Phil O’Donnell and Davie Cooper stands as “hordes”) were angry with Smith or the ref for a lot of the game - always a sign that our prospects are fragile on the pitch. I spent most of the match in plain, simple terror. What’s more, the emptiness of one end of the ground and the dank dullness of the floodlight blind spot which is the South Stand goal area, often threatened to give this match the air of a reserve game. The progress denoted by tonight’s result has no champagne-popping connotations. Not yet anyway.

We’re top of the league, yes. It fills our hearts with pride and joy, yes. But there’s little sense of “It’s in ra bag, peepelle”.

I’m glad there’s doubts. I’m reassured by the lack of elation. Under this kind of honest analysis we’re only going to get better. Our current tabular position is a fantastic starting point for such improvements. Particularly when you throw in the mitigation of tonight’s slim, slim, anorexic win: Gretna are definitely improving of late in the SPL - winning at Tannadice, drawing with Aberdeen and Kilmarnock, giving Celtic a bit of a game at Parkhead. They’re getting used to the Fir Park experience and, remember, reigning champions Celtic only beat them in Motherwell by the same score-line we achieved this evening.

And, one more excuse for the road, Gretna played at the weekend - we didn’t. Losing a two-goal lead at First Division Morton is the kind of performance which left Gretna’s players hurting and dying to prove something in their next match: That it was against Rangers was inspiration enough for them but that they had 90 minutes under their belt so recently also helped to produce the real gutsy, battling, feisty (and all the other synonyms for the character Barbara Streisand plays in all her films) performance in their biggest “home” game of the season so far. And Kenny Deuchar is back.

As I’d predicted on Sunday night, our main worry from all the January postponements was not the energy required to tackle the ensuing fixture pile-up, but the lack of sharpness which one game in eighteen days would deliver to the Rangers legs this evening. We’ve now got ourselves back to match fitness, while winning a game, while stretching our lead at the top of the SPL. S’aaaalll gooooood.

Fir Park is a different place when Gretna are at home. Don’t get me wrong, the temporary tennants fairly pack their areas of the ground - both that Directors’ box and their dug-out were MOBBED - but they create a hellish atmosphere: Us Gers fans feared for our safety, walking up the winding boulevards and mewses of the run-down, dishevelled £250k-per-bungalow surrounding area. Everyone knows Gretna’s firm aren’t afraid of our stanley knives and Milwall bricks - they all carry anvils, hammers and horseshoes, for goddsakes!!

One wonders if Brookes Mileson ever visited FIr Park before Gretna used it as a home from home? If not, from his Main Stand (now Phil O’Donnell Stand) perch he’ll think Motherwell are taking the piss: Straight across from him is the biggest anti-smoking advert in the country. The fascia of the East Stand - with the punning words we all know so well daubed in bigger, bolder letters than ever; KEEP CIGARETTES AWAY FROM THE MATCH - is probably low enough to be just at the infamously chain-smoking Gretna owner’s eye-level.

As I sat directly under the clock of the scoreboard in the South Stand, the similairly huge and low fascia of the Davie Cooper stand was at my eye-level. I’m always stunned by how much the five huge blue maple leaves advertising FlyZoom’s main Canadian destinations resembles five stars … perhaps representing ten league titles each! Maybe that’s why I alwasy feel so welcome at Fir Park - so at home. Or perhaps it’s because of the jolly game of “find the seat” you can play in the South Stand. It’s a bit like Sudoko. With only, on average, every tenth seat numbered - and the numbered ones spread around the top and bottom of this huge stand in totally random fashion - it can be half-time before we all know exactly which yellow or amber bucket seat should be ours. Och, it’s hilarious. Certainly more funny than those poor folk still waiting at that bus stop between the South and Main stands at Fir Park - they were stood there when I was at the Motherwell-Rangers League Cup Quarter-final in October!! The bus isnae coming, folks - flag a taxi!!

Just behind that bus shelter tonight was the temporary Setanta pundit box, up on its scaffolded stilts. From my seat, I could see past Rob McLean into the back-end of the box - the bit you don’t see on telly: Looks like a really tatty garden shed; Pure dump by the way! Setanta are imitating Sky but seem to be all front with very shakey financial clout just managing to keep them afloat. Just like The Teds this season perhaps? Are we looking good enough to compete with the other Champion sides of Europe but only getting by on Keegan-style momentum. Will Walter’s returning Messiah act - now just ONE YEAR OLD - come unstuck as the real testing patch of the season kicks in?

Well, erm, this IS that time of the season. We’re doing just fine. It’s kinda difficult to top the league - even if that league is the SPL - in January and have done so by accident or default. Progress at a club like ours usually only requires you to jump one place in the table. I went to see Gretna at home - their real home, Raydale Park - some four years ago. They lost 1-0 to Cowdenbeath. Stood beside me on the covered home end was a guy wearing a Gretna scarf and a full Rangers track-suit. He was in his forties - and was pretty hardened looking. He’d obviously lived most of his life knowing there was little or no chance of Rangers ever playing Gretna in a competitive game. Like me at John Greig’s testimonial in 1978 - when Rangers played Scotland - it was a conflict of interest he never thought would arise. Tonight I wondered if that fellah was in the Main Stand. I knew he wouldn’t be wearing the same tracksuit I saw him in last (He’s probably got the brad new Umbro one by now!) but - my god - what a mind-fuck when your club’s success is as sudden and dramatric as Gretna’s. THEN you can worry if the bubble is going to burst so dramatically that you’ll go back down even lower than from whence you began yer rise.

But not for Rangers. Our rise over the last 12 months has been impressive both in its speed and reach but, for a club who’ve won their national league title more than any other club in the world and who’ve competed in Europe more often than any other team in Britain, winning the SPL and playing noh-half bad in the Champions League is NOT nose-bleed territory. There were no midnight pacts made at crossroads to ensure this revival. For, really, it’s just a mini-revival. Some of our players and some of our formations may be on borrowed time right now - but Rangers Football club, as pleased as we are with tonight’s confirmation of our improved health, are still treading water when it comes to even our most moderately worthwhile ambitions. Win five out of every six SPLs while reaching the quarters and semis of the Champions League often enough to (a) eventually win it one season and (b) get ourselves invited into the English top flight.

Being half-way towards winning our first SPL in three years is, therefore, just another day at the office. Some of us, The Bears, might get excited about that kinda stuff but Rangers are always thinking further ahead. So it seems only right that, just as I was thinking “we’ve got all this wide play but no-one’s bursting through the middle” Stevie Naismith should nod on a high ball down the centre and Barry Ferguson, our captain, should lash it into the net from the middle of the edge of the box.

Taking the lead seemed to be the thing. That was my main worry at kick-off - that Gretna would score first. They’d tried their damndest and been inches away from taking the lead themselves on several occassions in the previous 44 minutes - so Bazz would have broken their spirit with this one. So I thougt. But then Gretna came out for this warm-up I’d heard they now do. Two minutes before Rangers came back down thr tunnel, nine of Gretna’s outfield players were doing little shuttle runs and limbers in front of the South Stand. Forty five seconds after the ref started the second half they went down our left wing, swung in a cross and The Doctor gave us our medicine. Kenny Deuchar equalised and, at Inverness this Sunday I want to see Kenny McDowall putting our players through their paces two minutes before the re-start!

No Hutton, no McCulloch, no Thomson. A lot of dodgy clearences from defence. Some complete failures to clear. Naismith came off for Darcheville and the mouths booed the decision to leave Cousin on the field. Seven minutes later I was shaking my hands above my head in mad ultra style as Cousin celebrated scoring the winner in front of me - if yer a Govan Stander away games give ye the chance for the oft-missed “behind the goal” experience and I used this one to shout “Ye’ve fucking showed them again, Danny - ye’ve fucking showed them again, son!!”. He doesnae throw himself at lost causes or chase down every defender in sight, Cousin. He just waits to score the goal which will win the game. Then the people who were calling him a cunt five minutes previously are telling him to “gawn yersel big man!”. He probably will go - but if he stays til the summer we will probably win the SPL.

And if Hearts don’t sort themselves out, Gretna will be having only their second season of the last six in the same division. The team at the top of the league played shite this evening - the team at the bottom played great. Both clubs have reasons to be worried tonight but both have even more reasons to be immensely proud.