DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH (GERS … 1 Sellik … 0)

A day of beautiful sights, sounds and vibrations. Apart from the works of plackard art on European nights, rarely have I seen such beautiful flags and banners and co-ordinated pockets of display amongst The Bears (1993 Scottish Cup final?). Rarely have the Celtic fans been seen and heard less at an Old Firm derby. Rarely have we wanted it more than we did today. When yer in the ground for 11:45am, just standing in the concourse, feet tapping, you know you want it bad. When you’re able to get twenty two stone twenty two feet off the ground, ye know yer celebrating a goal ye wanted really bad. When ye feel the concrete-covered girders under yer feet yielding like a Commonwealth Pool diving board, you know everyone else doing the bouncey wanted it as bad as you. When ye find yerself, three minutes after the end, gate-crashing into and hanging over the front of the Bar 72 “balcony” singing Follow Follow to the Bears and Celts leaving that bouncey castle of a stadium, ye know how ye would have felt if ye’d lost this game: Bad. But the greatest sights and sounds of today came after a final whistle more welcome than the first drop of rain in the Gobi: Our captain’s face as he left the pitch, our manager’s eyes and words as he faced the press - Carlos Cuellar passing me on the dual carriageway as he headed home for his bed before most of the Bears had even pulled themselves off the Ibrox roof. Tonight, Rangers fans party - Rangers players concentrate. All we’ve won so far is the League Cup and, last time I glanced at Setanta, Paul Le Guen was winning the French one. League Cups alone don’t cut it round Ibrox way. Seasons like this are only ever two defeats away from footballing tragedy. Our team knows this - they’re maintaining the focus.

Walter needs me now. He needs to get me on board. If it hadn’t been for my lack of skill, pace, fitness, co-ordination, back-bone or spleen, I could have been a great Rangers player. But that dream is behind me now. Old Father Time, with his dirty anorak and pockets full of Worthers Originals, has forced me to let it go, to move on. Now, I must offer up my services to The Divine Cardigan, as a motivator, a psychologist, as - in effect - a mini-Waldo. The danger now is we might think the league is won. It ain’t. We need to burst our wee derby day bubble off the field before anyone does it on field. And no-one does pessemism like I do - no-one finds and highlights potential pitfalls like I can. No matter how rosey the outlook, I can paint it bleak. No matter how lively the party, I can throw over it a dampener more effective than any sprinkler system or lack of drugs. Ironically, for one so fat, I’m the master deflator.

Walter needs me to make a wee speech in the dressing room, or maybe on the Murray Park First Team pitch. Walter needs me to give some extra bite to the almost cliched mantra of “nothing’s won yet - one game at a time” - just in case any of the players think they know better than the party line being so beatifully towed today:

When I hit my car, edgy demeanour back on as I edged towards Broomloan environs, Walter came on Radio Scotland. Like Barry White I almost didn’t hear what he was saying for simply basking in HOW he was saying it. A luxuriant, gravelly flow of modesty, realism, concentration and dedication to the work ethic. I let Walter’s aura de-mist the windaes. Celtic had given us real problems and we had to win today because we still have to go to Parkead twice. Really, all we’ve done today, Walter confirmed, was buy more insurance against what happens to most teams who visit Parkhead on league duty.

I didn’t see Carlos with my own eyes. I just saw the tinted windowed expensive vehicle pass me on the outside and set the Bears in the car in front of me off like fireworks. They hung out the window of their Merc, throwing such extravegantly animated worship and praise at the passing posh motor that I initially thought it may be Celtic fans behind the shaded glass and I was being caught up in a drive-by wind-up. But then the window rolled down on the noteably different vehicle and the tanned arm of a Spanish friend or family member gave a thumbs-up sign and the Bears in the Merc went even wilder. I had to know. The tinted car hung a right in the filter lane, I slipped outside and pulled up beside the Bears at the lights. Windows rolled down.

“Who was that, mate?”

“It was Cuellar”

“Did he still have Hesselink in his back pocket?”

The lights turned green. We want the SPL trophy ribbons to turn blue. Morrisons - milk - bread - beer - home. Rewind video just to the end of the game so as to see the interviews (and to double-check the cameras didn’t pick me up making bum-fucking gestures towards the Broomloan at full-time! Sorry - not very “Rangers” - not very proud - I just lost it). Barry Ferguson’s face as he left the pitch was as Stuart Pearce described the West German players providing urine samples alongside him after the 1990 Word Cup semi in Turin;”A stranger couldn’t have told who’d just won the game - they were so respectful they almost looked as unhappy as us. I don’t know if we’d have been as well mannered if we’d just won.”. Barry loved it - he celebrated. All the players went wild, but only at the appropriate time and the celebrations of the Rangers employes today were infinitely more circumspect than mine. Than ours.

Four straight Old Firm wins. A new goalkeeping record for our new goalkeeping great, Allan McGregor. Rangers are a club with a reputation for, a stereotype of, DEEEEfence. Today we added another chapter to the legend. The Iron Curtain. Davie Meiklejohn. George Young. Tiger Shaw. John Greig. Terry Butcher. Richard Gough. John Brown. Andy Goram. Chris Woods. Stefan Klos. Alan McGregor, fresh from the best save ever made by a Rangers goalie - Bremen - makes another world class stop at the only time of the game we needed one and, like that, becomes the first Gers keeper to keep four straight clean sheets against our greatest rivals. Phenomenal.

Celtic battered us at the back a bit today - first half anyway. But Cuellar and Weir aren’t brilliant simply because they’re always brilliant - they’re brilliant because when they’re struggling, they can still be good enough for any opponent. Venegoor of Hesselink was subbed coz, after a promising start, he eventually got sucked into our defence’s back pocket. Smaras hung about, Scott Brown had his best game against us, for Celtic, but was denied by fair mean and foul - like all good defences deny you - and Scott Mcdonald would have been as well just staying on the bench. Or Australia. Celtic’s best chance of the game came from, of course, a German. But a German full-back having the dig of his life. Allan McGregor is having the season of his life.

They’re saying the banner could read, at the end of the season, “Kevin Thomson v Scott Brown: half the money, ten times the player!”. We shouldn’t make that flag until the SPL flag is ours. But today studenty-looking Kev did all he could to live up to that proposed taunt. He put his Withnail and I DVD to one side, he stubbed out his joint, he shoved his Camus in his back pocket, he downed his Pot Noodle and switched off his ipod half-way through a Razorlight tune, and he made himself a legend. His tracking-back and surging forward were phenomenal. His goal, his first for us, on the stroke of half-time, in the most vital game of our domestic season so far, was trigonometrically perfect and a diorama of desire and belief.

Barry plays the ball in, Darche does the one-two with Kev and suddenly it’s all on. Watch it on the telly and it happens in a flash. Watch it in the flesh, in real time, and it lasts longer than a Miltonic epic … yet is more complete. Darche and Kev provide the most beautiful couplet I ever did see, Thomson’s end-rhyme is perfectly heroic. His finish, like him, is as clean-cut and princely as the Archangel Gabriel smiting Satan’s unwashed hordes. The enjambment is a gloriously innocent overrun of momentum, almost onto the track in front of the Broomloan. Behind the picture of his ecstacy is the joyful-to-see pain of the visiting support. Paradise Lost. Ibrox won. Their darkness is visible - we’re creating Pandemonium.

The easeful study of concentration and cockiness which slotted that ball under Banana-man Boruc sent Ibrox into raptures rarely enjoyed in this 21st century. Though I sang and shouted against it with all I had, I waited and waited for the Celtic equaliser. I saw Rangers squander a couple of chances to make it 2–0. I saw Kev viciously fouled by Samaras and booed the big Greek thug for the rest of the game. I saw it on telly later and instantly remembered Celtic’s double-winning hero Andy Walker’s continual veneration of the attacking dive near the penalty box. Handy that! Kev was subbed instead of dismissed and Rangers dug in at the back, pushing less and less men forward and our players seemed to enjoy doing what we hate watching - letting Celtic come onto our strength: Defence.

It is only when it’s all over that you realise how much you loved that defence. Again. But its’ only wnen the season is all over that the winners and losers are decided. We were fantastic today and we established a piece of history with four straight wins to no goals conceded against Celtic. But we won nothing silver.

Steve Davis was brave and tidy and so determined but no dominant. Christian Dailly is a picture of security - a utility man who does odd-jobs all over the pitch; Clearing a high ball from our box here, going on an attacking overlap there and slotting in behind Captain Kirk as he ably but nervously dealt with the overrated McGeady.

Celtci had enough spells today and have us enough hints of problems to feed their confidence for Parkhead’s derbies. We WERE infallible, unbreachable - but there were little scenarios which, on another day, may go against us, may see us lose a goal or two. Ifs and bust don’t count but Strachan will know how to tweak those scenarios.

Hats off to Celtic for largely disporving the main thrust of my attack on them last week., They did NOT try to manufacture a riot at the end of yet another derby loss at The Palace. For the most part they toned down their petulance. If anything I think we’ve come to realise Boruc is a disaster waiting to happen to them. He’s virtually always booked now in high-profile games and is just a touchy, over-sensitive, egomaniac big wean (takes one to know one) - he cannae wait to leave Parkhead so the idea his antics are something to do with a love for Celtic’s myth is itself a fallacy. He’s a clown and a child and there were plenty signs today that, if we hold out long enough at Parkhead on April 16th and there’s a few dodgy decisions from the ref early on, the big Pole will lead a Celtic implosion.

But we can’t bank on such stuff. There is another traditional Celtic way of “using” preceived persecution. As a motivational tool. There was plenty of dodgy shit going on today - it’s a derby so it’s almost compulsory - but the camera-friendly stuff will only ever be remembered by Celtic. McGregor MAYBE carrying the ball over the touch-line as the linesman walked away, assuming our goalie had stopped sliding along the grass is an incident which will be replayed for the next few days on telly. By the time we go to Parkhead in April, a narrow decision in a game of football will have been escalated to the proportions of a dozen Black and Tans beating up a pregnant relative of Constance Markiewicz in the backstreets of 1920s Dublin. Strachan will certainly hammer this fallacy into a reality with his players - and it might just give them an edge. And we can’t pretend Rangers, as beautiful as we are this season, are the perfect specimen just yet.

And this is where I can help Walter. Just in case someone thinks it’s all over. Just in case someone at Rangers, understandably, has become so intoxicated with our continued defensive brilliance that he thinks it infallible. Ye need THE DEFLATOR! And here I am, sucking the joy from the room like an errant hoover passing over yer line of charlie …

We’ll start with what Walter knows: He says League titles aren’t decided by Old Firm games. He knows this to be fact because one of the previous times we experienced joy like today was in 1998, doing Celtic at Ibrox to ease to the top of the league with just a few games to go. We lost at Aberdeen the following week and at home to Kilmarnock two weeks later. That’s what cost us the title that season, despite the fact we beat Celtic three times (once in the cup) and drew once with them in 1997/98.

Secondly, it’s been so long I can’t even think when the Old Firm side which lost the New Year’s Day game last went on to win the league. In 1997/98, the ONLY derby won by Celtic was the one on 2nd January. It tended to be the THIRD league derby of the season. Similairly, the following season, in 1998/99, we lost 5-1 at Parkhead and won only ONE of the four league derbies - but we drew the third one, at New Year. This year’s Ne’erday derby didn’t take place - quite rightly - but the third derby of the season is yet to be played and we have yet to travel to Tannadice next week, after a tough Euro Thursday, and Fir Park amongst other places, amidst other competitions. Celtic win on April 16th and they’ve won the third derby and smashed a hole in our confidence while we play seven SPL away games. Walter, being Walter, was quick to point out today that we’ve enjoyed the succession of home games which necessitated the run of away games so there’s no excuses form us - just a warning to ourselves.

Thirdly, Celtic are the reigning champions and reigning champions don’t give up their title without a fight. It’s probably gonnae appear at some point, this fight.

Fourthly, Gordon Strachan is being lambasted but has won the last two leagues at a canter, qualified for two straight knockout stages of the ECL and has beaten Man U, Milan, Benfica twice and Spartak Moscow in the last two years. I hope it’s over for him but any argument that he only won the SPL because Rangers were crap is disproved by all he did in Europe and is pish anyway - he helped MAKE us crap, and no one ever wins the League by accident. I’ll wait until the season’s end before deciding he has lost it. And THEN I’ll celebrate in the little fucker’s ears. But I can’t believe he hasn’t got something else to say about this season’s title.

Fifthly, Rangers have only won the league once in the last EIGHTY YEARS in a year ending in “8″. Oh yes - now the portents are getting SERIOUS!

Celtic were formed in 1888, won the league in 1898, 1908, 1938, 1968, 88 and 98. Hibs won it in 48, Hearts in 58. Apart from 1978, you have to go back to 1928 and 1918 for The Rangers having successful “Year 8″ league campaigns. Yeah, I AM serious! What did G. K. Chesterton say about peple who don’t believe in god …?

Sixthly, Celtic are going for “three-in-row” and these always tend to be close affairs. When they won their first 3IAR under Jock Stein (Cold in his shadow? - think ye’d be better asking every Celtic manager and board member since Stein), in 1968EIGHT, they did so by only two points and the first league game Rangers lost that season was our last game of the season. When we won our first three-in-a-row in our Nine, it was on the last day of the season, on a day we started in second place in the league. We may only be teeing Celtic up for a glory-glory, late comeback league win.

Seventhly, we’re so chuffed coz we’ve won four straight Old Firm games but only two of them count towards this title and, as yet, none of the four have secured a trophy.

So, there ye are Walter - that’s EVERYBODY warned. My job here is done. We’re all grounded, focussed and not so much demotivated as REmotivated.

Now let’s bask in the fact Celtic will have to win at least one of their games against us at Parkhead and that this means they must attack, attack, attack - against a team who live to DEFEND, DEFEND, DEFEND … and take on the break.

Oh, and, tonight, let’s party.

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Published:
03.29.08 / 10pm
Category:
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