HUBRIS SHMUBRIS! (GERS … 4 Buddies … 0)

What the hell was I so worried about??!! If ye have a look at the last rant on this blog ye’ll see I was a wee bit trepidatious going into this game - a trifle concerned that we’d think our last two league wins were the only “sticky” fixtures we’d have to endure against bottom-sixers. So many times has it been said by observers, myself included, that our late, ground-out victories over Gretna and Inverness were signs that Rangers were ready to reclam their SPL title that it was almost as if today’s St Mirren fixture was a foregone conclusion. Fates had been tempted, heads swelled, bannana skins ignored. It seemed. I fretted aloud yesterday that there would maybe be a big black-and-white striped hummel bag of Hubris awaiting us at reception today … with a Paisley postcode on teh returnee details … aye, erm, I thought St Mirren might take points off us.

And, let’s be honest, for the first twenty minutes of this one it seemed as if the Buddies were gonnae give us even more hassle than Gretna and Inverness Caley Thistle in our last two league outings. Not only did The Teds have hee-haw pops at goal but the “plucky” visitors had three of their own - one of which required a sharpish Alan McGregor save to keep us on an even keel. Had St Mirren gained the lead and given themselves a foot-hold they definitely have the ability to dig in and pick up at least a point at the homes of the Old Firm.

But - ifs and buts are just that. What did happen was that we weathered the storm of resistance and did our “grinding-out” a bit earlier than we’ve managed it in recent games. Instead of waiting til the end of either half before taking the lead, we played Chris Burke into the six yard box with only 27 minutes played and he squiggled and squeezed the baw intae the net. St Mirren then rocked - had a man sent off - and we banged in two more goals before the break.

Again, we looked like potential champions, demonstrated another title-winning quality - this time it wasn’t through “gridning one out” but looking pish for the opening twenty seven minutes then ending the game as a contest within the following ten. “Give them an inch and they take a mile” is a phrase oft heard of trophy-lifters. Praying Mantis, Black widow spiders, They huge Aligators that hide in the mudy banks waiting for antelopes to take a drink - we waited and waited and waited, then pounced with a clinical viciousness which ended the contest in a bloody flash.

If we do eventually win the league this season and are in exactly the same position on this day in 2009 as we head for two-in-a-row, this kind of performance will be more ammo for the “Walter-Must-Go” brigade who will no doubt be in full flow by then - but, for now, two years without a league championship, we are allowed to paint everything positive in the positive light it deserves.

Jim Traynor’s utterly disgusting treatment of SFA Chief Executive Gordon Smith on Radio Scotland - Smith had committed the barbaric crime of having a go BACK at the media during George Burely’s first press conference as Scotland manager and then made the mistake of being man enough to come on air and let contact book-journalism idiots like Chick Young and Traynor convince us all that this was the REAL STORY of the week - just half an hour before our game kicked off, demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that this country is more interested in vilification and outrage, at the MEREST excuse, than it ever is in lauding success and encouraging growth.

Gordon Smith is far from unaccountable and the peerless Richard Gordon knows how to put queries to him in an unsycophantic yet entirely proportionate manner but, my god, Smith was simply used today, for half an hour, as a battering ram for the squalid, myopic, self-obsession of the tabloid media with their own self-aggrandisement. Traynor should never be allowed to work for the BBC again. He’s not a journalist, he’s just a parasite who is allowed to talk over the top of anyone who disagrees with him, constantly hanging onto irrelevant truisms as some school-boy idea of justification for his campaign of incitement and muck-racking.

Leave that behind in the car at 2:35 then get pissed on for the twenty minute walk to Ibrox and ONLY being 3-0 up at half-time - and enjoying it with a steak pie and a coke - could alleviate the sense of depression which is always threatening to engulf any positive sin the Scottish game and/or the fortunes of Rangers. Enjoy it NOW, troops - while we’re on the up - the same next season just won’t be good enough and we have a media out there who will amplify the voice of the lone nutter til it drowns out the silent majority’s satisfaction.

The rest of the match was an exercise in trying to score the greatest goal of all time. Steven Whittaker came closest by simply scoring exactly the same goal he’d scored against Kilmarnock earlier in the season.

Suspensions and injuries were run out of overly-rested legs and, all-in-all, this was another delightful exercise in forging ahead. Darcheville’s ball through to Boyd for the second goal was class in a glass and Whittaker’s first was less spectacular than his second but, I suspect, a lot cleverer.

To be sat there at half-time, knowing your team are three up against ten men, is the equivelant of teh boss going home at 4:30 on a Friday - you know it’s all over bar rthe shouting: The weekend is here.

One more goal in the second half would have been nice - it woudl let us get AHEAD of Celtic’s goal difference but we’ll settle for cancelling it out just now. Nothing will be truly proved, I feel, til we go to Parkhead and avoid defeat, but I’d rather do that as a club already some way clear at the top of the table than one who let silly points slip from their grasp because they were so focussed on the “Big” games. If we carry on like this the Old Firm triple-header to come will be nothing more than a side-show, a chance for Celtic to gain some short-term empty revenge for our waltzing off with the title.

But real life doesn’t work like that. This run will end - Celtic’s day will come, their chucky will arlah.

Yes, we’re stretching our lead at the top with each of our last three victories (even if it was just one point to four against Gretna then one to four again after the ICT game) but we won’t win forever. Nah. That’d be too easy. Celtic have been through their rough patch and, while it’s nice for US suddenly to be the ones with the points on the board rather than the games in hand, the hooped hairies will be chasin’ us all the way. We can’t see this as a high point today, we have to see it only as the beginning of the hard work.

Three games, three wins, 11 goals for, none against - let’s step it up a notch, Gers!

(And let’s never buy another piece of paper with Jim Traynor’s name on it and never ever phone his radio show. Fuck the hype - give us relevant facts. Dare to be dull!)

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Published:
01.26.08 / 6pm
Category:
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