WE ARRA ProPlus PEEPELLE (Jags … 0 GERS … 2)

We are The ProPlus People. Not the players. If the players are knackered they certainly urnae showing it. There’s plenty of replacements on the bench anyway - as demonstarted today - and all that happens at Murray Park is the players do light training. Actual games will replace the usual tougher training sesssions. Ye know what it was like when we were all kids - before we discovered the two Bs which curtailed Geogre Bests’ career, we played fitbaw every night of the week. Ye never felt fatigued. Professional athletes who live for the game only feel knacked when they’re losing. And right now, Rangers JUST AINT LOSING BABY!!!

Naw - it’s noh the players who need the ProPlus - it’s us, the punters! We are the ProPlus peepelle - coz aw this celebratin’ and aw this getting excited about the next game, really is starting tae take its toll.

FUCKING GREAT, ISN’T IT!!!

Ya beauty! Absolutely knackered, troops. Cream cracked. And fucking loving it.

Celtic drop three points last Saturday. But I was driving back from a Junior game in the Mecca of the Juniors, the Doon Valley and with Auchinleck’s match finishing an hour before Celtic v Motherwell and me knowing The Well were 1-0 up at half-time, I just HAD to listen to the second half commentary didn’t I??!! WHIT A LONG DRIVE that wiz! I pulled away in the motor as the second half kicked off, I pulled up just outside my hoose as the final whistle blew. In-between times I went through the bloody wringer backwards. I’d lost four stone just by sitting on my arse listening to a team I didn’t even support going down to ten men and then clining on for a win against the only team which can stop us winning the SPL title. Just HAD to go out for a drink or ten after that one. Well, ye’ve goat tae calm the nerves, ken.

Next day I’m up at the crack, aw excited and needing a few coffees to “take the edge off” before heading up to Tannadice where we all had our nerves put through a shredder this time … sideways AND backwards. Long drive home, on the auld keyboard giving it big licks on the white-on-blue blog in what, basically, amounts to a very large natter wi aw yer mates about what’s on yer mind after the latest episode of the Rangers Soap Opera. Worried. Cannae get tae sleep. Work next day and - BANG! - it’s countdown tae Thursday night ….

Yer unable tae switch aff fae whit happened at Tannadice - just a big bag of emotion and excitement - and yet yer then melding all that inner trauma into the build-up towards one of the most important games of yer Rangers-supporting life. It was mental, wint it!

Dunno if yese noticed but I was, basically, on here every night, ranting and raving, posting and replying, just trying to SHARE. A problem shared is a problem halved but RABIDLY TORTUOUS EXCITEMENT shared is, well, RABIDLY TORTUOUS EXCITEMENT DOUBLED .. or trebled … or (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) … QUADROUPLED!

By the time Thursday came I was like someone on Cold Turkey, coming off the junk. Suffering from my last fix but the memory of it making me BEG for the next one. I wiznae even IN lisbon. Didnae go. I was penned-in for a two-night shot in the old Cathedral town of Durham. I was down to be driving fae Glesgie to Northumbriawaersidecountydurham-le-street-shire-farne first thing Friday morning. I couldnae be stepping off a plane at Glesgie airport at 5 am and then stepping into my Skoda SXI for a cross-border jaunt at 8am. But, as we all know, I WOULD HAVE BEEN AS FUCKING WELL DOING THAT … because after what occurred in Lisbon, I was sat on this blog till 4am anyway. By the time I got some kip I would have been MORE AWAKE after the two hours sleep I’d have got post-Lisbon airport.

Could have flown down to Durham on Friday anyway. Without the need for a plane, you understand. Absolutely wrecked - physically. High as a fucking kite - mentally. And I mean mental-ly. An 80s compilation of naff electronic songs did us all the way down - some of them were bringing tears to my eyes because I just transferred the emotiosn contained in the song to the emotions in my rotund gut, pertaing to The Gers and what they’d just done for us all. Yazoo singing Don’t Go is quite simply me talking to Carlos Cuellar. Gary Numan asks Are Friends Electric? and I say no, but the fucking RANGERS are, Gaz!! And then, “let the music play, he won’t get away … our bodies in sway with the dance” etc - That’s me with the UEFA Cup trophy itself. It’s coming towards me, asking for it … and I’m fucking game!!

Felt like I was hanging on a bit all day in Durham, sat in the hotel bar, Roy Keane walked in, I fought the urge to walk up and ask him simply “Why d’ye do it, Roy? You were never a cliche at any other point in your career. I loved you, man, I thought you were great. Why’dye do it, Roy?”, bought some crisps, I had a pint or two and then could NOT GET TO SLEEP, even in a big, comfy four-star bed.

Next day, had a full day. Started off by pushing my way past the entire Sunderland team at reception before they set off to get fucked at home by Man City and then tried a big meal and a few more pints last night to, ye know, get me over. Seeing Queen of the South had done Aberdeen was no surpirse, although HOW THEY DID IT, was rather spectacular. And that was me, worrying again, worrying that we might get unconsciously cocky this afternoon. As well as worrying something might happen which stopped me getting back up the road on time for Firhill. It’s not REAL worry - it’s simply the way someone my age feels excitememnt and anticipation. The Quadrouple is more on than ever and now all I can do is think up ways in which we wont win anything other than that CIS cup already in our trophy cabinet - and even then I’m thinking Dundee United could retrospectively prosecute us for some invented misdemeanour and have it removed to Tannadice ….

And then I’m squeezing myself into that old wooden Main Stand at Firhill this avvo, wondering how I could have been stood inside Durham Cathedral this time yesterday and yet suddenly I’m back in Glesgie. And then I’m applauding the European heores onto the muddy Maryhill pitch and I’m wondering, even though they have the white socks on, I’m wondering how I could ever have left them, how I could ever have driven so far away from Ibrox in the wake of the greatest night of my Euro Rangers-loving life … since Leeds. And then I’m remembering the story about Durham Cathedral - the story about the clock which the Scots didn’t wreck.

Durham Cathedral’s been there for 1000 years and, basically, It’s like the Nou Camp - it’s impressive rather than beautiful. In fact, it’s quite feking scary. Sammy Johnson said “it awes rather than pleases” … but I cannae mind whit Barcelona game he attended. Anyway, in 1650, after the battle of Dunbar, apparently, Cromwell put all the Scottish prisoners into Durham Cathedral - probably the only place big enough to hold them - and, ala Wembley three hundred and a bit years later, the guys in kilts TRASHED THE JOINT!

Well, they trashed the joint all except for one big wooden clock, which was still there yesterday (I didnae trash it either - coz I couldnae make up my mind if I liked Cromwell coz he was a Proddie or hated him coz he was a republican. Ooooh the labels, the labels …). And the reason the dying, jaundcied Jocks hudane wrecked the amazing-looking time piece was also still there, above the ornate clock-face, in all it’s glory: A BIG, HUGE, JAGGY THISTLE!!

An ornamental thistle, topping the decorations of Prior Castell’s Clock in the South Transept of Durham Cathedral, fascinated me yesterday and then put the superstitious fear of Goram intae me today: THISTLE!! Partick fekin THISTLE!!! Was this clock a sign from god, was this a sign from …

Aw for fuck’s sake, we won easy. We won EASY today - and we had the reserves oot too. Whit the HELL Was I worrying aboot??!! Bloody GROW UP, man!!

But that’s the thing - ye cannae grow up this season - coz we’re living in a FUCKING FAIRY-TALE!! It’s magical - it’s amazing - it’s a thing of wondrous wonderment! How can ye be SENSIBLE in a season like this. We need to win one more league game to win the leagiue - if it’s one of the ones at Parkhead. We need to beat our second and third First Division opposition in the Scottish Cup to secure that lovely old pot. No-one can take the League Cup from us. To win either of the games at Parkhead will be a mammoth ask - but it’s doable …and we could probably get away with simply drawing one of them. We then have two other mammoth taks - against Fiorentina - in which we hope we’ll win the chance of a third behemothic task; beating Zenit or Bayern at the City of Manchester Stadium on Wednesday … (naw, Eck - don’t mention the date until it definitely has something to do with your club. Bad ju-ju. Fiorentina is a near-impossible task as it is without you walking under ladders, chucking spilled salt over the wrang shoulder or putting umbrellas above yer heid in the hoose).

We only have to win one of these four guaranteed mammoth games - one of the ones at Parkhead - to ensure this is one of the greatest seasons in our history, that we will not under-achieve on all the promise we’ve shown. Wining the SPL title is at the centre of the regard in which this season will be held in future years. Fail to win the league and we’d NEED to eliminate Fiorentina from the UEFA Cup to ensure the historic glory is retained for 2007/2008. Secure the SPL flag and reaching a UEFA cup semi is, for the media and most punters, glorious bonus territory.

I’m not talking for myself here. Personal-like, I’d swap all the domestic stuff if we could guarantee winning the UEFA Cup. But that kind of bargain is never offered and, let’s be honest - if ye elminate Sporting Lisbon, Werder Bremen and Panathinaikos from the UEFA cup, ye’ve just proved that ye SHOULD be winning the Scottish treble as well. I’ve spent my whole life saying a Rangers team which achieves European success will win Scottish honours by defeault - but now it’s in front of me I’m hardly walking around with a barely satisfied look of “at last - they’ve FINALLY got round it” on my discontented mug. Nah - even though I’ve always said European success, especially in the UEFA cup, is far rom beyond Rangers, now that it’s here I’m realising why I did always go about saying that: BECAUSE I WANTED IT SOOOOOOO MUCH!!

Now it’s here, it’s amazing. Now it’s here, we want it all. Because ye don’t get chances like this every season. In Europe we haven’t had a chance like this since 1992/93. In Scotland, we’ve won two more trebles since the one we achieved 15 years ago. But we all remember the pain of not getting to Munich in 92/93 - now we want to get to Manchester in 2007/2008. And we want to go there with two garlands already on our head and another to come afterwards.

I think I want to win at Hampden next Sunday almost as bad as I want to win against the Florentines and the hoopy swines. Did Celtic themselves not go out of the Scottish Cup at the home of a First Division side - Inverness - after one of their great wins enroute to Seville in 2002/2003?? Or the Sunday after some great European result anyhoo?? I didn’t want us doing the same today. I want it all. We need it all.

We keep looking for games where it’d be acceptable to lose - if never pleasing. And, frankly, the two Fiorentina games and the two Celtic games are the only ones left. Achieving what we’ve achieved during this campaign brings its own pressures and, basically, if we can’t win the Scottish Cup now, when only First Division opponents stand in our way, it’ll be a pyoor beamner. I don’t want to see this Rangers team suffering a rid neck. This is closing in on the season from heaven - let’s keep it that way.

This is why I was out my seat like a very fat salmon when Nacho slid in to squeeze home our opener today. I didnae want any signs of nerves or simple stasis, as there were in the first game at Ibrox. I wanted Thistle dispatched with no trauma and no stress. For me, yes - but mostly for the team. I wanted today to be a gentle warm-down from Thursday last but a healthy warm-up for Wednesday next. Between two trips to two different green-and-white hooped holes, we wanted a nice comfy sesh of gving it to with Mary Hill, not a Jaggy Thistle up oor arse.

It was also nice that Nacho got it right up a Thistle Support which obviously had it in for him from his Dundee days.

it was weird being at a ground where I sat almost in the middle of a main stand, looking straight across at the entire opposition support, the entire HOME support, square-on. Okay, I was doing something similair at Tannadice last week but, Dundee United’s stadium is so bitty and two-tier at points. Plus there are fans at each END of the ground on Tannadice Street. Today, with one end Rangers and one end green grass banking, there was a real weird quality to the stand v stand dynamic across the width of a pitch rather than the length of it. Thistle filled their Jackie Husband Stand and we filled their other two. And this alowed the best moment of the day for me:

2-0 up at half-time and as the second half gets underway, Walter Smith is still in the dressing room area. As he walkd from the little plastic add-on building Thistle have in the corner of their ground, every Bear in the Main Stand he walks along the front of, gets back to his/her feet and begins solemnly applauding. By the time Walter reaches the dug-out, the whole Firhill Main Stand is on its feet, just gently letting him know he’s a god and we love him.

Personally, I was reminded of the court-room scene in To Kill A Mocking Bird, where Scout is told to get to her feet, with the entire black population of the town, simply because her father, Atticus Finch, is passing.

Hardly the same but - hey - I am simple and Walter is far better looking than Gregory Peck ever was, with so much more gravitas too.

Chris Burke had made it 2-0 just after Nacho made it one. Kris Boyd got most of the game today - and played very, very intelligently. He knows he’s slow, Kris, but he also knows how to compensate for that. He was central to both our goals and if he wasn’t having a shot he was allowing others to do so merely by his presence. Against this level of opponent the amount of work he does put into a game is more than apparent.

Burke was central to all the key moments too. Yet still goes unloved by a lot of Bears, me included. Stevie Naismith did far less than Chris Burke today but is still loved by most Bears, me included. Just shows ye - bigotry isnae always about religjon: Sometimes ye just don’t like something or somebody.

Bazza was rested, Davie Weir was back, Cousin came on for a few minutes - just long enough to miss the pen which the guy he replaced, Monsieur Boyd, would have most likely buried as just reward for his all-round efforts.

Steveie Smith is back. Thank fuck. The wee guy was IMMENSE today - simply because he’s been so long out of first team action and I really doubted if I’d ever see him in the first XI again. He could well be in the plans for Wednesday now.

Whittaker got a full game after being a spectacualr sub on Thursday and almost put together another goal of the same ilk as the 91st minute at the Jose Alvalade. Simon Donnely made far too much, mid-week, of his need to score against Rangers for the first time in his career. Penalty miss - another tie-in wth Goram for Mcgregor - and then skying one off the bar. That was yer last chance, Simon; ye blew it - and then another one.

Thsitle did well, gave us plenty scares and will rue their pish finishing.

Me? Like every other Bear, I’m having to INVENT stuff to rue these days.

Here’s to another sleepless night, thinking up worrying stuff - and here’s hoping there’s many more to come.