Can I just say somethin’ here …

Did anyone see That Was The Team That Was on BBC1 Scotland on Friday night? Okay, I was making my way home from some post-work pints, via the Spar 8-til-late and my great new local Kebab shop, but I taped it. Three cans of Miller, one large Donner (salad and sauce, nach’) and a sensational BBC4 play about Tony Hancock (take a bow, Ken Stott) later, I’m grabbing the TV remote and flicking to the video channel. Let the tears roll.

This great little series of Aunitie McBeeb’s featured this week upon, of course, The Gers return to title-winning ways under Souness in 1986/87. I was 17 when we won that league. I’d been in love with Rangers for almost as long as I could remember and yet I could barely recall us lifting our last league title. Coz I was EIGHT that day. The time elapsed since Souness arrived at Rangers and the present day still doesn’t feel as long as the period 1978 to 1986/87. I’ve written a chapter on this seminal moment, for me and for Rangers, in a decent book published, however, by a Celtic-supporting drink-and-dial calamity of a thoroughly bigoted publisher. So if you don’t have this book, and the fact they let me write for it has put ye off ever buying it … GOOD! Don’t give that silly slimey cunt at Fort Publishing another penny.

However, I almost sent Souness my own freebie copy. When he said at the end of that programme, “only time will tell if I was good for Glasgow Rangers but Glasgow Rangers were certainly good for me” I became so emotional I actually forgot to chastise him for prefixing our club’s name with some irrelevant geographical reference.

“You were fuggin BRILLIANT for us, Graeme. You were fucking PERFECT mate!. Perfect! Ah fuggin luvv yoo, mate - yer some man … don’t you EVER doubt how much you meant tae us ya big-moustachioed bampot HERO ye …”.

Coz, ye see, as I explained at great length in a book to which I now wish I’d never contributed but in an article I loved writing, Graeme Souness was perfect for Rangers as we were at that time. He was a bad manager for other clubs in the future, the wrong choice, the wrong personality. For us, however, in 1986, he was a better fit than Santino Corleone and that bridesmaid at his sister’s wedding (don’t just watch the films - read Mario Puzzo’s crap book!).

Ye see, Graeme Souness was “a winner”. And this, by all accounts, means he was a “bad loser”.

Now, according to The Tao of Kenny Dalglish, you can “show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser”. Dalglish and Soooooooneeeessss were legend team-mates and room-mates for Scotland and Liverpool when one team used to qualify for every World Cup and the other won every second European Champions’ Cup. One can only assume that the World Class KennyDal - world class in terms of his footballing ability as opposed to his philosophic treatise - would have passed this mantra onto Graeme or, indeed, learned it from the thick-thighed, permed one himself.

Football is a very quick, very physical game. The thought required for its execution is muscular, not cerebral. Managers must ensure all eleven of his charges understand his tactics, his motivations, his ambitions. The manager needs to communicate something that even the thickest winger or densest centre-half can compute. Gazza was a genius with his feet but never the brightest in the classroom. Footballers, therefore tend to live on lowest-common-denominator instructions. They’re fed snappy one-liners because, ultimately, every game only lasts 90 minutes to 120 plus pens.

So “show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser” fits the bill for what is expected of a player, personality wise. It’s nice and STUPID.

Football-SUPPORTING on the other hand is an entirely different animal. I know I’ve been going for 31 years so far and am seriously hoping it’s not even half-time yet. So many people - in fact most people - see me, first and foremost, as a fat Rangers fan. And I wasn’t always fat. So when I conduct myself in and around football environs, I like to flatter myself that - ye know - I’m representing my club. There ARE times I’ll have to be nasty - to defend myself against the vilest attacks but these are most likely to come from fellow Bears coz, ye know, someone who doesnae know my club cannae really get to me.

But, most of the time, I like to live by an ethos which is slightly more developed than an 11-word sound-bite, a gimmicky little epigram of self-justification for acting like a fucking wean. I act like a wean all the time - particularly around Rangers - so I really need to extrapolate my reasoning for doing so. I require some seriously well-developed justification for some of my actions. I’ll go for everything from “football is art” arguments to explain why re-runs of Germany’s first goal in the 1972 European Nations final always have me close to tears, to “football as a parallel universe which benefits our real lives” pontifications when I’m being asked why I would rather spend 8 hours on the motorway to freeze my nuts off at Bury v Stockport County than sit in a nice warm pub after a trip to the local cinema.

Those quotes are, however, the TITLES of my argument rather than the complete argument. Eleven million words will never be enough to explain our loves, hates, ambitions and fears … about football. So eleven-word sentences are little more than cliched indicators of mood. But - hey - we’re here to teach and to help so let’s reach out …

Graeme Souness was a bad loser. An inordinately bad loser. He admits that, the players under his charge admit that - anyone who watched him play KNOWS that. When Scotland lost 1-0 to Wales at Hampden in 1985, in a World Cup qualifier, I was there with my dad. Ian Rush scored the only goal of the game and it just wisnae going Scotland’s way. At one point, Souness went for a 50-50 with Wales’ own hard man midfielder Peter Nicholas (later of Aberdeen). I don’t remeber it but my dad still recalls it as the most vicious assault he’s ever seen on a football field (And we were both at the “friendly” in 1982 where Gregor Stevens jumped over the ball to break a Kilmarnock midfielder’s leg for no reason other than total psychosis!). I’ve heard other fans and pundits agreeing with this analysis of the incident. Basically he tried to disembowl the guy/blind him/something nice like that.

Thats a bad loser in action, in extremis. And that, for decent people, is humiliating. It’s cheap, it’s horrible and it’s cowardice.

The lowest one-off, on-field moment of my Rangers-supporting career was as I stood up the back of the old Rangers end at Parkhead and watched my club’s manager being red-carded for a deliberate lunging, crippling foul on Celtic’s Billy Stark. Souness knew the game was going against us. He was being taunted by the Parkhead locals (so what - that’s what football crowds do). He lost it - he lost us the game and, seeing the Rangers manager (a sacred position to many of us) being red-carded for what was a basic submission to Old Firm defeat was appalling for us that day.

Souness himself, however, also regretted these acts. And openly. Even when he was dismissed in the first league game of that fateful season, against Hibs, he talks about how his dad was shaking his head at him from the Easter Road stand. He says this is probably his lowest ever moment. Yet for 17-year-old me, on the old Leith away terrace in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat, I thought it was a worthwhile act by Souness. I thought THAT day Souness put down a marker against anyone with delusions of being harder. He was targetted by the Hibs players - quite rightly as he was our best player and a known hot-head - and he put a four-inch gash down George McCluskey’s shin. Grame walked off the Easter Road pitch - McCluskey was carried off. He wasn’t a posturing hard man - he was the real deal. Anyone with hair like that had to be. If you were gonnae TRY to get him sent off, you would go to the hospital as he collected his red. Every other red card souness received as Gers manager was NOT worthwhile and was entirely his own fault - he was partly trying to take out an opposition playmaker (Brian Irvine completes the set) and he was also venting his rage at on-field defeat - but for all of them he felt SHAME.

And all of these shameful acts took place DURING a game. We all do rash things during a game, when everything’s at its most axiomatic. Stupidity is explainable then.

When Souness was a bad loser AFTER the game it was with his own players. He was horrible to Terry Butcher and Graeme Roberts - we heard on the Beeb on Friday night how he was horrible to Ally McCoist and Ian Durrant. All these guys were Rangers legends but Souness vented his spleen on them and, well, the bed-rock for Nine In A Row was laid. Yes, he had his pop at refs and this was churlish. Yes he had his go at the hammer-throwers at St Johnstone but that’s two rants in the midst of five of the most turbulent years in the history of Rangers and Scottish Football - and all from a man who was then younger than I am now.

When the game is over, when your team has lost, when you’re a player you shake hands and you get tore into yourself if you’re a bad loser. When you’re a supporter you get tore into your own team too - you vent spleen on other fans of yer own team if they’ve aided the situation or been over critical in defeat. You get ripped into any arsehole who attempts to slag you for being a real football fan or slags your team coz they lost a game, as every team does. But you do NOT take out your “bad loser” bad mood on decent opposition fans, mediocre refs or Scottish society as a whole. Because, after all, they can’t help being misguided enough to support the wrong team. Let results alter your mood but not your fundamental personality (That’s only ten words - eat my dust, Kenny Tao!!).

Graeme Souness never won the Scottish Cup. In the 1989 final we lost to a goal which came from a shy incorrectly awarded to Celtic instead of ourselves. Rangers supporters, however, remember Gary Stevens fucking-up just before Joe Miller put away the winner. We remember the fact that John Brown waved a whinging hand at the ref when he should have been marking up Roy Aitken’s positively quick taking of the shy he should never have had. Rangers supporters know that if we ever let one or two bad reffing decisions decide a game than we really would be a poor team.

Gary Stevens and John brown are Rangers legends, so is Souness and I forgive them all EVERYTHING because they gave us so much more than they lost us. But when Rangers have been winning fuck-all for the last three years, and our greatest rivals everything, I’ve remembered that so much more can be won, even in footballing defeat.

For, if ye like yer thinking short and catchy, how about this: “Show me a bad winner and I’ll show ye a winner”. We’ve won fuck all other than the League Cup this season - Saturday was nothing more than an insurance policy against two defeats at Parkhead putting us out of the title race altogether.

OR, even shorter …

“Anyone can be magnanimous in victory”.

Can’t think why any Rangers fan would find the foregoing rant in any way relevant. Just as I can’t think why I’m mentioning the following (must be because Graeme Souness played in italy):

I attended Atalanta v Verona in serie B in April 1999 - big end-of-season promotion clash. I stood on the Curva Pisani with the Atalanta ultras - only coz my Sister in Law was one of them, mind! - and I asked what I could shout over at the Veronese, to make me one of the Ragazzi. I Soon found out that the worst insult you can hurl in Italy - even between two northern teams - is “NA-PO-LI-TA-NI”!!

Neopolitans get the same abuse in Italy as the North East does in France (see Thistledhub’s post and link at bottom of previous thread). In fact the Neapolitans get it worse. So much worse. It really is a different country down there. And you just gotta love Napoli. As I stood there in my Jim Baxter retro-top, I couldn’t believe all these good Catholic boys and girls around me were being so racist.

Oh no, wait a minute, I could believe it . That’s right - sorry - I remember now - I COULD believe it.

“That must make Celtic the Napoli of Scotland” say our perpetually offended friends from across the toon. Errrrrrm - NOH! - sorry. Napoli have won TWO league titles in their entire history and even that was only when they had Mara–fucking-donna. It’s when ye see REAL subjugation that the whinging from the estate agents and bankers in the Broomloan on Saturday, all in front of their former Home Secretary chairman, becomes more insulting than laughable.

Christ - what’ll it be like if we actually DO win the league??!!!

Tomorrow night: Preview of the Sporting Lisbon match - thank Gawd! There’s nothing like playing an all-or-nothing, potentially historic/disastrous game at Ibrox against a team in green and white hoops to make us forget all about Saturday’s Old Firm hoop-lah!

Aherm.