HEROES AND ZEROES (GERS … 0 Zenit … 2)

I, and all the REAL Rangers fans in that stadium, stood there to a man and woman and applauded Zenit as they lifted the trophy. We applauded them as they got their medals - we applauded them onto the pitch. Not one boo from us. And we stood there, our hearts breaking, as we watched our players walk past that trophy, taking their runners-up medals …Those baubles were indeed runners-up as opposed to losers’ medals. This match represented the pinnacle of achievement by a near-miraculous Rangers side. The best attack in this competition - arguably one of the greatest attacks in the history of the UEFA Cup - only defeated this Rangers team with the last kick of the ball, the final kick of the 2007/2008 UEFA Cup competition. It took until the fifth minute of injury time before Rangers, indomitable Rangers, were truly OUT of European competition. After 19 games, from Zeta to Zenit, from Bremen to Lyon, from Athens to Barcelona, from Belgrade to Florence, Rangers had been dealt just one single killer blow in European competition in 2007/2008 - and it was only permitted in the very final tick of that 10-month clock of fortitude.

I only cry when Rangers win. This isn’t just about a staunch refusal to “give our enemies the pleasure of seeing me greet”. It’s just that I will not allow an on-field loss to overshadow the life-long joy that is supporting Rangers. It actually can’t. I’m always proud of who I support. I try to support them in a way which makes them and me proud. When we win a big game, a massive match like last night’s, THEN I let all the pent-up frustrations - be they decades or days old - come bubbling out my big old, double-glazed, Ted Moult-installed windows on the soul. I don’t greet when Rangers lose. When you lose, concentration must be maintained, lest it leads you to lose again. I only cry when Rangers win.

But, I’ll tell you, when I watched my players collect their medals last night - when I applauded them as they passed the UEFA Cup on the podium, I had to summon all my reserves of stoicism to hold back a violently-wobbling bottom lip. For once, UEFA actually had the good sense and decorum to have a proper podium presentation, from the main stand of a stadium. This is one Michel Platini innovation we can all love. The on-field temporary stage on which we usually see teams dancing about is a bit tacky and glitzy for traditionalists like myself. European football is all about entering the pantheon. I want my players high on a rostrum within the crowd, lifting the silver from the belly of the throng who adore it so.

0A Rangers captain has yet to do that. John Greig was handed the Cup Winners Cup in the belly of the Nou Camp administrative offices. Rangers, as I predicted before this journey, will never do things like Celtic and when you pump alcohol and high emotion into a party, all the pretence is ripped away to reveal a much rawer underside. This is what happens when you refuse to be who YOU are because you spend so long obsessing about the actions of your rivals. Pretence always collapses. In 1972 we tried to invade the pitch ala Lisbon 67. That’s not us - we’re not like that - even if it wasn’t our fault that night, it ended in a riot. Yesterday we tried to impersonate Celtic’s thousands in Seville, with the street-party almost as significant as what was going on in the stadium. That’s not us, we’re not like that, Manchester is not Seville - and look what happened. When you try to be what you are not it takes a violent, unpleasant revelation to get us all back to the basics of our identity.

As we mourn the passing of a true Celtic man, Tommy Burns, it’s never been clearer that people are people and, basically, we all have the same hopes and aspirations, the same loves, losses and fears. We just approach them by different routes. But the reason we love the football as a place to go is because it allows us to believe in the myth of collective identity - it gives us that warmth and comfort from the notion of society and sociability. Humans hate loneliness. We all need the herd. We all need to belong. So we sprout different collective indentities for our different clubs because there’s nothing like a common enemy to unite a nation and there’s nothing like a misguided idea of what you DON’T like to make you decide what you ARE like. Celtic are cuddly, rebellious, anti-establishment, entertaining libertine jokers. Rangers are the staunch, dour, Presbyterian disciplinarians. From our strips to our styles of play, from our stadia to our songs, this is the way Glasgow’s big two clubs have divided themselves and their fans. It’s all bullshit - of course it is. But when you’re creating a parallel universe or a belief system, you need to make your denominators very common, if not necessarily low.

Basically, The Rangers support comes from a very distinct group behaviour stand-point: We do not need success as much as Celtic because this is our country anyway. We are The Establishment, therefore we have less to prove. Not being immigrants, we are happy in our everyday lives so we don’t need the football as a vehicle of soul-saving distraction and enjoyment as much as a pleasant diversion, etc, etc. Again, this is, of course, utter garbage - just as the notion of all 1940s Germans being Nazis and all black men being great dancers is total garbage - but the need to acknowledge it is paramount. After all, why else Manchester if not for the deliberate delusion that 11 men chasing a ball around a patch of grass is worth so much time, money and devotion. The conscious life demands a construct of meaning for existence or it is not worth living. But you must maintain the integrity of those constructions. You must reinforce the beams and build the foundations deep. Yesterday, I think we again tried to be like Celtic fans because, again, they got there 5 years ahead of us and laid an unconscious template in the collective memory of the Rangers support: We all go to the city of the UEFA Cup final and we all drink in the sun. But that city was at the end of our street and Rangers do not deal in diasporas.

And, even so, an unprecedented number of Bears and Bearettes behaved in an exemplary manner. Were an absolute credit. Only a few hundred spoiled it. Like comparing the Woodstock to Altamont festivals, the overall physical results of a mass invasion of Celtic suporters with that of Rangers fans doesn’t produce too much difference. But where it is different it is spectacularly so. 200,000 Rangers fan did NOT deserve to be tarred with the brush we are today having slopped onto our backs. Yet I always felt this is how it would go. We shouldn’t try to mimic others - we must be ourselves.

And, there I go - first mistake - using the first person plural pronoun. It may be cliched but it’s true, those peole were NOT Rangers fans. Even if you want to stereotype all of Beardom, and we ourselves like to be stereotyped, then realise that we should be friendly with England rather than smashing it up. More than that, though, we should behave with pride, We should respect the police - because they respect the Queen. Stereotypes or not, the vast, VAST majority of Rangers fans are just so damned decent it would make ye greet. And I’m so sickened that a few BAMPOTS have tarnished this day, this massive event in our history more than losing the match EVER could.

If I wear a Rangers shirt, it doesn’t mean I’m fit to play for Rangers. If people wear a Rangers scarf - they still have a hell of a long way to go before they’re fit to support Rangers. I hate mawkishness and I hate outward signs of sportingness which hide either a basic disinterest in the game or a more deep-set bitterness. But yesterday was about more than just sentimentality or behaving in a media-friendly manner.

I, and the REAL Rangers fans in that stadium, stood there to a man and woman and applauded Zenit as they lifted the trophy. We applauded them as they got their medals - we applauded them onto the pitch. Not one boo from us. And we stood there, our hearts breaking, as we watched our players walk past that trophy, taking their runners-up medals. And I realised why I was so close to tears: Because this WAS a Rangers victory. Those baubles were indeed runners-up as opposed to losers’ medals. This match represented the pinnacle of achievement by a near-miraculous Rangers side. The best attack in this competition - arguably one of the greatest attacks in the history of the UEFA Cup - only defeated this Rangers team with the last kick of the ball, the final kick of the 2007/2008 UEFA Cup competition. It took until the fifth minute of injury time before Rangers, indomitable Rangers, were truly OUT of European competition. After 19 games, from Zeta to Zenit, from Bremen to Lyon, from Athens to Barcelona, from Belgrade to Florence, Rangers had been dealt just one single killer blow in European competition in 2007/2008 - and it was only permitted in the very final tick of that 10-month clock of fortitude.

I was, after all, watching a Rangers victory. More, accurately, the hope had finally been extinguished and it was only when Rangers collected those runners-up medals that, in Europe, this season, there was nothing left to do but reflect. SO far we’ve always been left with something major to ponder, there’s always been another challenge on the horizon. Standing in front of seat 1128, in row C of area 240 in the City of Manchester Stadium in Eastlands, Manchester, around 10pm on the 14th of May 2008, I could finally look back and judge. And I judged this Rangers team MAGNIFICENT. What they have done this season is gargantuan. The pride was threatening to overwhelm me. But it was a defeat - we did NOT win that cup and Zenit were clearly the better team on the night. You cannot argue with score-lines, so I refused to cry. But it was impossible not to wish that Rangers team had the kind of material reward their super-human efforts deserved. Not for me, not for the fans, but for THOSE PLAYERS and for Walter Smith.

There was nothing but love and respect from the vast majority in the stadium. And, in that stadium, we WERE the vast majority.

And so, when the last player is down the tunnel, when Super Ally and Nacho finally leave the pitch to Zenit and the UEFA Cup, I slowly make my way out. I meet with my two young cousins, Paul and Fiona, we’re gutted, we’re muted, but aside from a few discussions on tactics and individual performances, we’re not grumbling. We’re just musing and even that’s half -hearted, because we’re just too gutted to raise any ire or any ill-feeling. I grabbed a cheese burger and a coke, I called home, we all began traipsing back from Eastlands into the city centre and then we got the first text. And then a phonecall. My sister and my aunt and uncle, Paul and Fiona’s mother and father, were all in town They didn’t have tickets. They had a hotel - we were all to stay there that night, out in the Sale district - but we’d left them in a bar called Lime, just off Albert Square’s fan zone. The’d watch the game in the city centre. They’d evacuated to Piccadilly station for a taxi and they’d seen it all going off. They called it a riot.

My aunt and uncle took me to my first Rangers game, 31 years ago. I took my sister to her first Rangers game, 22 years ago. Paul and Fiona, needless to say, are Rangers crazy. There’s five university degrees and a PHD between us and only one arrest - ye’ll never guess who was drunk and disorderly in Saltcoats on a Friday night when he was 18 years old??!! I was admonished.We’d split into our two groups after a few hours of laughs and nervousness in the city centre. We discussed our lives supporting The Gers and we agreed this was the moment it had all been leading up to. My uncle had given his ticket to his daughter. I know how much that must have meant to him - and her. I felt more priveleged than ever to have a brief for this match. We took not just our hopes but that of the whole Rangers family - the ENTIRE WORLD-WIDE Rangers family - into that stadium with us. Now, in eth immediate wake of a crushing defeat, that family were calling us to say “don’t come back into the city - it’s a war zone”. When, all around us at Eastlands, Rangers and Zenit fans were mixing with barely a raised voice never mind any excitement, it seemed easy to disbelieve these reports. Man! - there was a house party going on in a flat overlooking the main thoroughfare and a lot of Bears were appealing to the young folk indoors to turn up the beats to which they were thumping and bumping. How could there be a riot? But I’d been waiting for it. So much booze, so much sun, such a massive number of people - the dark element would always be there, ready to shit all over everyone’s parade.

When police vans full of riot cops go speeding past the football crowd AT THE STADIUM, to get into the city centre, it tells you all you need to know about the causes of the trouble. The people who’d seen the game in the flesh, the true fans, were no problem. We could all be left to deal with our pain on our own. Like adults. Like Rangers fans. The people who’d loved Rangers their whole lives, with a sincerity worthy of anyone in that stadium, but who could not get a ticket, they were too dissapointed to cause trouble. They’d just want to go home or back to their hotels. Real fans know that the real pain of a big game defeat is life-long. You have years and decades to deal with it - not just a few drunken hours in the immediate aftermath of the final whistle. Real fans, who truly invest emotionally in their club, know more about shattering defeat than they do about glorious victory - we have a psychological support system in place which tells us how to carry on, how to survive pain. In other words, we know how to take it. Okay, when a big screen showing the game fails, yes, you will be gutted and worried you’ll miss the match. You will complain. But you will NOT act in a way which makes it less likely that screen ever gets fixed. Those who threw missiles were ALWAYS wanting to throw missiles.

Selfishly, the conundrum of getting back into town for transport out to the hotel without being bottled or battoned, actually took our minds off the game. A near-riot is the only topic sufficiently engaging to distract you from the most gutting defeat of your life supporting Rangers and, maybe, in a twisted way that’s what some of those scumbags were doing last night. But, having been at the coal-face of that gutting, historic on-field defeat, my last intinct was to riot. The first instinct of every true Rangers fan was to behave with a decorum befitting the efforts of our team and the name of our club. The true gut reaction to the final whistle was SADNESS AND PRIDE.

There WILL have been heavy-handed policing. We had to talk to a few coppers yesterday - some were nice, some were not and few of them, it has to be said, were of much use. Yes, they were disinterested in handling the Rangers crowd and the entire City of Manchester Stadium organisation was appalling - beautiful ground but horrifically “run”, especially for a show-piece game. And, yes, there will have been innocent Rangers fans who got themselves wound up into a frenzy of self-defence and overreaction by such bad policing. But, honestly, the responsibility lies with those chucking missiles and wrecking cars. How does trashing some woman’s car get back at the police? How does “assaulting” an inanimate object achieve anything? There were far more of the rioters who were WHOLLY IN THE WRONG and behaving like SICKENING COWARDS than there would be heavy-handed police. And, furthermore, if you’re an officer who has just seen his colleague being set about on the deck by a dozen scumbags, you are not going to take chances when next faced with a protesting, angry crowd of people in Rangers colours.

Most of us who fly Union Jacks have an understanding of what it’s MEANT to represent. For me, it represents only Rangers - my team, my footbal colours - but, even for the mindless scumbag, you’d think the “Queen and Country” vibe might awaken him to the need to respect law and order in the tiny-minded, smug, Little-Engerland Tory manner of, say, Gordon Brown or Wendy Alexander.

We had to go into the city centre. The campest policeman I’ve ever spoken to assured us there was only “sporadic” violence and that all the helicopter noise and sirens was just an overreaction to isolated incidents. He told us to go to Piccadilly station for a taxi. We did so - it was carnage, but only the remains, the detritus of carnage. We wondered if perhaps this was merely the kind of mess you’d expect when so many people were gatherd to drink in a city centre. We decided to head for my car, parked in the NCP in Market Place, near Deansgate. Apart from the masses of paper and cans, we had to walk over so much broken glass but, again, mused that this would perhaps be dropped emtpy beer bottles - not necessarily missiles. But then came the bus stops, and the portaloos - all mangled and wrecked and smashed in. Then there was the guy pinned to the road by riot cops as a wee crowd of people in our colours tried to work themselves into a battle frenzy. Then there was the disintegrated glass frontage of Boots the chemists and a guy on fucking CRUCTHES hopping through the criminal aperture and nicking whatever he was nicking while a few others cheered. We just kept walking, faster and faster.

We got to the car, avoiding another crowd gathered under an overpass in the Arndale Shopping Centre. The car was intact. Our hearts were not. We were sickended, depressed, not a little frightened and suddenly very, very aware that losing the game had been the last happy thing to have happened to us. My two cousins and I drove out to Sale, managed to have a laugh as we got lost around Old Trafford and my aunt and uncle were ridiculously relieved to see their kids back in one piece. Paul and Fiona were wearing Rangers jerseys, I was wearing a Rangers scarf. But we’ve earned that right. We were all terrified and sickened by what happened last night. Every true Rangers fan was.

I got back in the car and drove home. At Bolton services you had to pay for your petrol before putting it in the car. I drove to the next service station by way of protest and nearly ran out of fuel. The queue for petrol was massive so I parked up, pulled my blanket over me and slept for an hour. The sun was coming up. They’d run out of Coca Cola so, for the first time in my life, I had some Red Bull. I also had some chocolate - not for the first time in my life - and filled the car with unleaded. What a beautiful sun-rise to drive home in. The day before I’d driven donw the M74 and M6 listening to all my old CDs - Stone Roses, Motown collections, White Stripes, Chemical Brothers. This time I listened to the Five Live night-time DJs talking about new discoveries about the sleeping patterns of Sloths and why Mongolia’s in danger of losing its international shipping license. The sun had faded by the time I got into Glasgow. And I spent the day sleeping, with the radio on by my bed. I would wake every hour or so to absorb news of the rioting in Manchester, the blaming of the police, the blaming of the Manchester City Council, the condemnation of the Rangers fans, the stereotyping of Scottish people by the city with the self-proclaimed “biggest firm” in world football and whose Council website last week mentioned they wanted no repeats of the sickening scenes which had followed the last ENGLAND game to be screened live in the City centre (!!!) and the heart-breaking death of Tommy Burns. I woke I heard, I fell asleep and all day I dreamed a nightmare.

The biggest week of my football-supporting life had become arguably the most depressing.

But I’m exhausted. I still am. And I have to go to work tomorrow and I can’t write this blog tonight with any enthusiasm. I just want to go back to my bed. And, most of all, I’m depressed because what should have been a report on the biggest match of my life and how Rangers had performed in it and how brilliant our fans were in the stadium and for most of the entire day in the entire Lancashire area, has necessarily been infected by the actions of the scumbags who have no idea what it is to support Rangers.

No-one likes us, We Don’t Care. Maybe. I often enjoy that part of our identity. But you should only fail to care when the reasons for disliking you are without credibility.

When I left the house at 9:45am yesterday, in brilliant sunshine, wearing my Marks and Spencers casual top which melds the colours of Man City and The Teds, my many-pocketed shorts and my Red and Black socks - you were right, guys, the shops were all sold out of Rangers tops - I tried to ignore the fact I’d just dropped and smashed the blue flask I’d filled with soup for a wee packed lunch. Instead I started the engine and stayed parked until I’d inserted my Stone Roses CD and flciked it on to FOOL’s GOLD. It’s my favourite Roses track and they epitomise Manchester. The disturbingly hexing title of the song only struck me as I reached the end of the street.

The momentousness of the match had only begun to truly strike me the previous evening as I turned into one huge goosebump listening to Radio Scotland’s 3-hour build-up. And I now knew why I’d managed to suppress it til now. As I hit the M74 and the M6, the number of cars with Rangers scarves flying out the windows and Union Jacks strapped to the back merged in with the brilliant good luck messages suspended from the overpass foot-bridges. I tooted the horn at the many people stood over the Motorway waving at all the cars. I’d only taken my distinctive 30-year-old Rangers scarf at the last moment. I haven’t worn it all season and what a season it’s been but I suddenly realised I HAD to take it to Manchester if not necessarily wear it to the game. On the mortorway I was so glad I had colours to spread across the top of the dashborad, to let people know I was part of this Red White and Blue convoy. At times, especially with every song I played sounding like it was written with the UEFA Cup Final in mind, the tears were almost blinding me to the point of wreckless endangerment.

I tried one service station for a pee stop. It was madness. Half-dressed men and women, sporting Rangers colours darted all over the car park and access roads. It was overflowing with Gers fans, most of whom were just going about their business but the nutters were here too. The drunk folk, the people whose primary care was finding an excuse to bevvy and act up rather than realise what this game was about or what our club is about. Tourists. Fucking tourists. I kept driving. Slowly. Some fat bitch in a Nacho Novo top deliberatley sauntered down the middle of the road on her mobile, in front of my car, daring me to toot at her.

I got back on the Motorway with the edge slighlty taken off. I came off at the next slip road, I drove along a winding country road until I found a sufficiently big tree behind which I could relieve myself without being done for flashing. I then, using the other hand (!), enjoyed my packed lunch looking over a Lake District scene of bucolic beauty. Chick Young told me Rangers were defnitely gonnae win the UEFA Cup. Graeme Spiers was leaving the city centre car park just as I was entering it. I met my sis and other family, we got into the groove in a city painted blue.

The “orange” route to the stadium was deliniated by approximately three A4-sized orange placards mounted on three lamposts along the three or four mile walk to the stadium. I got to turnstyle Z2 a full 35 minutes before kick-off. I was still in the same queue 5 minutes before kick off. A policeman tried to tell a few complaining Bears that at least we’d get to see 85 minutes of the game as a few Rangers fans had been chucked out altogether after buying tickets for the Zenit section. That was too much for me:

“Yeah, but they’re being punished for deliberately buying dodgy tickets - we’re being punished for doing everything by the book”.

The polisman started again with the “Don’t panic - what’s your worry??!” pish.

“What’s my problem? We’ve waited our whole lives to see our team walk down the tunnel onto the pitch in a European final. If, ultimately, we lose the game THAT opening moment will be the best moment of the night, of our lives - and we’re gonnae miss it because this stadium is being run by a bunch of amateurs”(I’m paraphrasing myself with extreme prejudice)

“Yeah but …”

“Yeah but UEFA picked this for a showpiece European final and it’s under-staffed and badly run and we’re not gonnae get in on time despite having tickets and being here over half an hour before kick-off”

A second policeman steps in and says “If you carry on like this you’re not going to see the game at all”.

Incredibly, I continued. It was an out-of-body, out-of-PERSONALITY experience, but I was beyond consolation. Am I as bad as the rioters in the city centre? I didn’t see Law and Order - I just saw a patronising loudmouth.

“I’m only replying to what your colleague was telling us. He started …”

“I will arrest you and you won’t see ANY of the game”.

I shut up and the wee steward took my ticket, put it in the chip-reader and in I went. I ran up the stairs, to the top of the stairs. It was executive boxes at the top. I ran back down stairs, onto the correct concourse. I saw that I was stood under entrance 230 - my seat was in entrance 240, ten gangways away around the curving concourse. I saw from the TV screens above the Burger Bars that the teams were IN the tunnel. I’m 22stone. I made it up stair 240 and got stood in front of my seat as the teams came down the tunnel. I raised my scarf and cheered like a dervish. Rangers were walking past the UEFA Cup.

It was beautiful. It was everything it should have been. It was a beautfiul stadium with an immaculate pitch and it was four-fifths full of Rangers fans who waved their union jacks and sang our hearts out and bounceyed till the whole world shook. It was the setting of all those European finals I’d watched live every May for the last thirty-odd years. It was neutrality and subjectivity combined. It was white versus blue, attack v defence, Scotland v Russia, Old Europe v New Europe, Saxon v Slav, Money v less money - it was as close as I’ve ever been to the action from a top tier, it was the most real glamour I had ever known and it was mine, ours, Rangers’. WE were a European finalist. WE were here.

And we were far from perfect on the field. yet we were so capable of winning this trophy. Hemdani had his moments of carelessness. Darcheville doesn’t always make the best decisions and his head goes down too easy. Barry Ferguson was too occupied with keeping Zenit occupied. But these are observations of why we couldn’t perhaps get a goal - not criticisms. Everyone in all-blue on that pitch - and the man in all red - are BEYOND criticism for now and for ever. We knew that, all the way up those raking third tiers of the two smashing long grandstands. Rangers fans were EVERYWHERE, folks - it was fucking wonderful. And so was Sasa Papac and so was Cuellar and Weir and big Kirk and Whittaker and, ye know, Kevin Thomson will never try harder than he did last night.

That’s the way it should be. Most of our players ROSE to the occassion and none of them have anything to be ashamed of.

They say Zenit controlled the game. But they only controlled it as much as Fiorentina or Werder ever controlled it. Maybe even as much as Sporting Lisbon controlled it. We looked so comfortable, we looked so settled and at home. There were no nerves. We showed like men. We did not disgrace ourselves as a team by any manner of means. I’ve never been prouder of my team.

We all know what happened. We all know the blow-by-blow events. We all have them in video and in souvenier Sports sections from Thursday’s newspapers. We will all relive the near chances ffrom now until we’re next in a European final. All I know is that I turned to the Bear next to me after 60 minutes and said “if we don’t win this game I’ll regret it for the rest of my life - because this is SO doable”,

“They’re there for the taking, big man. This mob are there for the taking. We just need one goal”.

At half-time all doubts about our readiness for such an opponent were dead. I felt convinced this Iron Curtain would at LEAST take us to penalties. I AM THE RESURECTION came on at half-time and so many Bears sang along and danced to Walter’s song. I was in heaven. And then we had that chance, that flurry of activity around their six yard box. And then I thought it was maybe the scarf. I’d worn the scarf for the first time this season. Maybe if I took it off we’d get a goal and win the game in nornmal time. I took it off, Zenit scored. I put it back on, Zenit scored again, that net so close to my seat I felt partly responsible for letting the ball past me - I felt I could have palmed it away on both occassions.

Congratulations to Zenit. They are a magnificent team and frankly, they’d have to be to breach this Rangers defence. After nine games in the 2007/2008 UEFA cup, Zenit are only the third side to score against us and the first to put two past us. And, after destroying the likes of Leverkusen, Bayern and Marseilles, the petro-dollar players on the biggest win bonus in the history of world football had to survive a few scares and wait until the 72nd minute before breaching the latest iron curtain forged in Govan.

Ironic that Igor Denisov scored in 72 minutes. Seventy Two. For another 12 months at least, and probably a hell of a lot longer, 1972 will remain the only year in which Rangers have lifted European silverware. If we leave it another 36 years before reaching a European final, I’ll be almost 75 years old. In other words, I’ll be dead. And, in the year 2044, it’ll probably be an inter-Galactic Cup final against Dynamo Red Mist from the Martian Premiership … at Maryhill Juniors new 300,000-capacity Lochchburn Park stadium. But ye’ll still get blokes drinking Buckfast … and ye’ll still get glory-hunters who, as we all know, have no idea what real glory is.

I saw it, in a Lancashire football stadium, on 14th May 2008. That what happened amongst a few hundred “people” well outside that stadium has threatened to spoil that glory is more heart-rendering than losing the UEFA Cup Final could ever be. So we won’t let it. We’ll find, arrest and jail those idiots who wanted mayhem. We’ll glorify and revere those players who made this the most exciting season in the lives of many a Bluenose.

On Saturday we must give those players the extra lift they need. We, the Bears in the Fir Park stands, must go that extra mile for our team now - they need us.

But that’s Saturday. Tonight, we remember Tommy Burns.

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Published:
05.15.08 / 11pm
Category:
News