HAMMERED DOON INTO HISTORY (GERS … 3 Doonhamers … 2)

As the all-white Teds slipped down the gargantuan Hampden tunnel at half-time I was painfully aware that the Darche’s failure to cross to Boyd or Beasley just three seconds earlier could have cost us. Cost us what, exactly, I was scared to say. But I felt sure it would at least deny us the chance to win this match easily. There was now no way Rangers were gonnae coast to a wide margin of victory in the late May Mount Florida sun. Had the thoroughly knackered Jean-Claude controlled that ball and taken a look up, stood as he was in acres of space at inside right, our 2-0 could have become 3-0 before-half-time and the game would surely have been over. Could’ve, should’ve … DIDNAE. End of. And, d’ye know, when Queen of the South rattled in their brace just after that break and once again Rangers were required to grind and stretch and bite and fight and dig deeper than a mole who goes potholing on his days off, I was almost as glad as I was terrified. Let’s be honest, if we’d won 5-0 we wouldn’t have recognised us. If we’d battered the gallant Dumfries outfit by four or five goals it just wouldn’t have been The Rangers we’ve been watching in the utterly absorbing, crazily instense, thoroughly historic and magnificently brave 2007/2008 camapign. “Easy”? What’s “easy”? FUCK easy! We don’t make it easy for anyone this season. We made a deal with difficulty in July of 2007. Difficulty. We’d take it from everyone if we could give it to everyone. You want to play for, against or simply watch The Rangers of 2007/2008? Then you’d better be prepared to suffer and earn it. Coz nothing, but NOTHING worth achieving in life is achieved with any ease - especially a place in history.

Congratulations Rangers. Congratulations you beautiful footballing loves of my life. What we’ve witnessed in the last ten months has been astonishing. Another generation of Bluenoses is guaranteed. Another few pages in the reference books of world soccer have been assured. And the overall love and admiration for our beautiful club has been redoubled once again. Yesterday, at Hampden, one of if not the most scintilating chapters in our 136-year history came to the most apt of endings. We ened the game and the season in control of the game, a trophy and the ball, passing all about with cool, calm, economical assuredness and sumptuous skill. But we won this match buy just one goal, having drained all concerned of their very last drop of stamina. We like a fight, we love a battle - and we take it all the way before the almost boring rigmarole of cup-lifting, laps of honour, post-match interviews and newspaper debate.

This Gers team loves the campaign for its own sake, not the frilly bits attached to it. Let’s be honest - if Darche had chosen to square that 45+2th minute chance across the Queens box and if Boydey or Beasley had added a second to their personal tallies before the break, then Queen of the South would have mounted a THREE-goal comeback in the second half. We just CAN’T do it easy this season. It’s against the rules. Rangers have dealt sma’ and fed aw on this season’s budget. The hard days against the Particks, St Johnstones and Doonhamers came from the lack of the concentration and edge we’d over-used in making it hard for the Barcas, Werders, Stuttgarts and Fiorentinas.

It’s typical of this season that our final Scottish Cup match was the ONLY Scottish Cup match we won in 90 minutes and on the day it was originally supposed to be played. Our only “easy” game in this competition was the mid-week thrashing of East Stirling which was itself a fixture postponed by the weather. If we’d been allowed to play an SPL match that midweek and had been allowed to play East Stirling last Monday instead of St Mirren then who knows how things would have turned out? We know - they’d have turned out chaotically. Scottish Cup matches could only be postponed for so long because of the nature of the knock-out comeptition. So even when Rangers appeared to be coasting, we were only making things more difficult for ourslevs. Our inability to defeat Hibs at Easter Road was in no way shameful - it was good to bring them back to Ibrox for a replay. But allowing Thistle to take us to a replay and St Johnstone to take us to extra-time and penalties were not such noteworthy achievements.

The slackness and blunt edge which crept into so many of our Scottish Cup matches was, in itself, a symptom of our suuccess. Players never decide to let a game go but when ye’ve just gone all the way against Werder Bremen or Panathinaikos and ye have a few crucial Old Firm games on the horizon, it’s only human nature to think - even subconsciously - that Irn Bru SFL opponents will be less challenging. When bodies and clubs are beginning to tire they will ease up whenever there’s the slightest HINT of an easy game. The problem for Rangers is we don’t ever want to lose - especialy to lower league opponents - and if we couldn’t bring ourselves to exit this competition at Easter Road with ten men on the pitch and our first choice goalie in the shower by the close, there was no way we could lose any of the following fixtures. On paper, Hibs were the toughest opponent we faced in this season’s Scottish Cup.

On grass, they were one of the easiest.

To Call Partick, St Johnstone or Queen of the South lower league opponents is to do both them and ourselves a disservice. The Scottish Top Flight should - we all know - consist of 16-18 clubs. The three First Division clubs we encountered in this season’s Scottish Cup were worthy of such a top flight, would be an exciting addittion to the SPL as is. We played our replay against Hibs at Ibrox on a Sunday. On the Saturday I nipped down to Cappielow to see Morton at home to Queen of the South. It was a miserable day (strange for Greenock, I know!!) but the Dumfries support was massive and half of them stood out on the utterly exposed “wee Dublin end”, getting royally soaked. One of them got arrested for stripping off completely. But even more striking a sight was the Queens nudist’s team as they defeated Morton with ease. The young fellah Burns who scored the second ran up to the Morton coo-shed to celebrate cheekily. As he slid onto his knees he looked me straight in the eye, stood as I was down the front, and I just laiughed coz I didn’t give a fuck about either team. Well, I gave a fuck about one of them yesterday. Also during this game, Barry Smith booted the ball straight out of play for Morton - I caught it. Barry Smith was Dundee Captain last time I was at a Scottish Cup final. He hit the bar as an exhausted Rangers team in all-white, chasing three trophies after taking the SPL title to the last day of the season against a UEFA Cup finalist, won by a single goal.

The romance of the cup? Well, there’s certainly plenty symbolism in it.

Personally, from East Fife at East End Park in September (Boyd scores two) to Hampden in the sun yesterday (Boyd scores two), I was chuffed to say Ive been at every one of Rangers domestic cup matches this season, including replays. Chuck in all our home league and European games, friendlies and a few away trips and, like most folk concerned with Rangers this season, I felt I’d been on a magical journey so exhausting yet so exhiliarting. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world but I’ll need a month in my bed before I can even think about doing it again. Or maybe just a night on the piss, a kebab and a long-lie and Euro 2008.

Queen of the South must be complimented in all sorts of ways. They began their Scottish Cup campaign by putting four past the Junior Cup holders. They ened it by coming back from two down and scaring the shit out of the UEFA Cup finalists. Inbetween times they stepped it up with proportional increments - defeating a relegation-threatened First Division side and then a promotion-chasing First Division side and then a top six SPL team and then … well then we had the privelege of attending the greatest day in the history of this smashing, proud, lovely club.

Sounds patronising, yes, and faintly Jim Bowenesque, but I’ve been to Palmerston and it’s a beautiful ground and Queens have a solid support. The Glasgow Street End, the big covered terrace is a great place to stand and watch yer fitbaw and if my romanticising of their Scottish Cup run seems too twee to be appreciated then consider it from a “gettitfuckingupye” point of view. Queen of the South didn’t really have a derby until Grenta appeared on the scene. And then the jeaously and bitterness at watching their neighbours being bankrolled to the kind of success Queens had only ever dreamed of caused crowds of 6,000odds when the two crossed paths in the First Division. The bitterness wasn’t noticed by the likes of us Old Firm zealots but, in the deep south of the south west of Scotland, Gretna’s trip to the 2006 Scottish Cup final was as bitter a pill to swallow as anything ever experienced by a “proper club” like the Doonhamers. As we ourselves cancelled out Celtic’s much-lauded run to Seville this season, you have to wonder if it was seeing what Gretna had achieved as much as going part-time and taking on the canny Gordon Chisholm which inspired Queen of the South to emulate their bitter rivals just two years later.

How appropriate that this Rangers season of biblical proportions should end against the only British football club mentioned in the good book (St Paul’s letters to the Corinthians of, erm, Sao Paulo, Chapter X, verse II, “And lo, Nebuchadnezzar did enter into the land of the Hippolytes and furiously did vent the lord’s anger by referring them to page 746 of the Rothman’s Football Year book, later sponsored by Sky…”).

Rangers too went through incremental changes in their games this season. We began the campaign by maintaining an impressive run of clean sheets while banging in three against Celtic and Lyon and, when we did eventually leek goals, we found ourselves humping Falkirk 7-2 anyway. As the season progressed we were scoring fewer but maintaining an equilibrium of progress, spread wafer-thing acorss four competitions. By January/February we were in a groove of unbeatability which made up for the waning energy levels By the end of the season, as our players began to fade in the latter halves of the five games we played each week, we were hanging on for dear life. As the summer faded in 2007 we were beating Celtic 3-0, Lyon 3-0 in France and were top of our Champions League Group after three games, one against Barcelona in which Messi, Ronaldinho, Henry and co COULD NOT SCORE AGAINST US. A 3-0 Lyon win at Ibrox soon knocked the “easy” notion out of anyone’s heads. Therafter we were losing three goals to Gretna’s Kenny Deuchar in two games. We were being taken to a replay by Partick, to penalties by St Johnstone. Yet we were still winning. We were still spreading the success as wide as it was thin. We were taking Fiorentina to penalties too. And so it has proved, when viewed overall, anything we’ve won or lost has not been done so in anything other than the most gruelling circumstances.

Celtic at Parkhead. We had to take a point there. No Rangers team has won the league without doing so for over half a century. We didn’t. But we scored three goals in those two Parkhead trips and we made Celtic wait until the 95th minute for their winner in the first game and we came back from behind to score two goals and take the lead in the second one before they won the day with a penalty. Werder Bremen and Fiorentina were eliminated from the UEFA cup but only after two of the most sustanied barrages of pressure ever endured by Rangers teams in the away leg. Yes, it was slightly easier in Florence but we then had to go through penalties. No easy wins. Even in Lisbon we were 0-0 at half-time and the winner only came in injury time, as did Zenit St Petersburg’s in the final. We lost the SPL title deep into the second half of our final league match of the season. It was only beyond us with ten minutes to go and that was when Nacho decided he’d better get himself sent off lest we had a full squad to choose from in the Scottish Cup final. We were always looking ahead, always trying to make the next game as pressure-riddled for us and our opponents as the last.

All through the league campaign, even when we did win well, as against Falkirk at home (7-2) or Aberdeen at home (3-0), it was always in the context of Celtic either being top of the league or breathing down our necks. There was never a moment of complete relaxation and there was never a victory or defeat which wasn’t evened out by some other negative factor: Our biggest domestic humping of the season came with a 4-2 defeat at Tynecastle. So next time we were in Gorgie we won 4-0!! We did Aberdeen 3-0 at Ibrox but they managed to do us 2-0 and cost us the title on Thursday last. We only won once away against top six opposition yet we won all but one of our 19 SPL home games. And, arguably, our most comprehensive “footballing” performance of the season - ie the game in which even the morons could see we were a great team because there was lots of nice frilly tricks and eons of passing play in which we retained the ball with consumate ease - came in a match we only won by one goal, 2-1 at Hibs in December.

Like a lot of you Bears out there, I was yesterday sat next to the same bloke I sat next to at the CIS League Cup final earlier this season. Totally different part of the ground but same neighbour. I was gonnae turn it into some sort of massive coincidence - “52,000 seats and we end up getting two together at two different games???!!” but, of course, it isn’t. It’s the organisers of the Continuos Cedit Card scheme among Ibrox season ticket holders. They’ll simply have the same folk, with consecutive Rangers membership numbers following each other in their computer base when they send out the briefs. But when it went to 2-2 yesterday, as it had done in the CIS League Cup Final, it seemed that symbolism city was once again in full effect. I was expecting the extra-time and penalties. I was already preparing my Yeah well SO - what about Raith Rovers in the Coca Cola Cup final??!! arguments for the Rangers-slaggers at work on Tuesday. As it transpired, we only have to remember Airdrie losing by just one goal to Celtic in the 1995 Scottish Cup final. Coz yesterday we also defeated the fourth-placed team in the first divsion by one goal in the Scottish Cup final.

Oh yes, it’s all about the Old Firm one-up-manship. They’ve just got one closer - but still nine away - to our total number of Scottish Championships. So it was quiet a comfort to an anorak like myself that we yeserday got one closer - and to within just two - of their total number of Scottish Cup wins. Celtic have, for most of my life, been ahead of us in Scottsih Cup wins only (we’re talking domestic okay!!! - no-one’s tallking about Europe here - OKAY??!!). When they go out early doors, as they did this season, I want us to seize the chance to catch up. So now we’re on 32 compared to their 34 and it irks me more than ever that we chucked two Scottish Cups away through our own folly. Okay, I know - I know yese don’t want to hear this again from me. I know a lot of you are even sicker of me going on about the 1909 and 1879 Scottish Cup finals than ye are about me harping on about Paul le Guen (see PLG narrowly failed to secure the French Cup double - pardon, “dooooooblay” - last night: lost to Lyon after extra time. Saw that Sydney Govu scoring at Ibrox, Paul - it’s no disgrace). But it irks me, troops - it sticks in my craw. We were really petty not to turn up for that replay against Vale of Leven and, as I said on the threads of Follow Follow at the time, we could live to regret chuking away a Scottish Cup. By the time half youse numpties insisted on joining in with the Celtic fans to riot at Hampden after the 1909 cup final replay I’d set up my own blog. And I used my forum to rail against the fact we’re all so quick to slag Celtic fans and then, the minute the SFA decide there’s to be no extra-time or penalties but another replay, we’re all on the pitch helping out the Celtic hordes in their off-brown flat caps, as they get stuck intae the polis and the fire brigade. I was the only one left on the West Terrace as you numpties ensured the SFA WITHHELD the 1909 Scottish Cup. Again, I told ye we’d live to regret it and, well, one hundred and twenty nine and 99 years later, I can safely say I TOLD YE SO!!! If we’d won they two cups we’d now be eaksy-peaksy with Sellik!!! I blame Martin Bain!

And yesterday, most bears of equally uneducated ways would never have dreamed Queen of the South would be easky-peasy with Rangers after a lovely first half display. Boyd, Boyd, Krissy Krissy Boyd got the ball and scored a goal which settled all our nerves. It was, for Yours Bluely, clearer than a well-hydrated athelete’s urine that we’d be better in the first half and Queens better in the second. They’d had a month off, we’ve played 38 games in the last month. We’d be sharper than them at the start of the game - they’d have more freshness and stamina by the end. It was also clear when we played 4-4-2 that we’d lose goals. We always struggle playing 4-4-2 this season. Therefore we needed to get a couple early on. So when we hadn’t netted after half an hour I began to worry. Well - I began to worry even more than I usually do.

As I said before, to lose to Queen of the South, all things considred, would not have been a disgrace and SHOULD not have taken away from this phenomenal season of ours. But it would have been viewed as a humiliation and would have sent us into the summer as a team with some fatal flaws, rather than a team simply two results away from historic greatness.

Boyd drives home that free kick and then Beasley guides home number two after great work by Carlos Cuellar. I hoped Queen of the South had had their big day in the semi against Aberdeen. They were, after all, the Rangers to our Zenit. Queens were the skint team who’d given so much to win their semi whereas we were the guys everyone expected to win easy. I hoped that was it. I’d seen Damarcus excelling at Hampden before, for the USA in a friendly against Scotland a few years ago. That he eventually signed for us was magical. That he scored against Queen of the South with the same slot through the keeper as he’d sent us into dreamland with in Lyon, was more about nightmare avoidance than fairytale.

I was in the North Stand, quite far up the back, almost in line with the spot from which Boydey hit his sumptuous free kick. Seeing the goals go in with such clarity was fantastic. But I couldn’t see much after that as the eyes has begun to mist up quite badly. They’d been doing that all day, really. The fear that this Rangers team wouldn’t get the praise it deserved, simply because we’d run into a brick wall of fitness defecit at the end of the longest campaign in the history of Scottish football, was all-consuming. I was genuinely scared. It had hit home on Friday morning and had haunted me ever since. I don’t think I was alone.

Queen of the South had a fantastic support with them. I was stood/sat pretty close to them. But they had about 8 to 10 times their regular hoem crowd with them. We had about 10,000 less than our regular home corwd with us. They desreved their day and their place in history but they did not need it as much as us. The screams which accompanied the build-up to their two equalisers spoke not of wanting it more but of people who were at their first ever football match and had never known the down, down, DOWNS of following a team for ever, every week. Half of the Queens crowd at Hampden will be in bits today and will refuse to even turn up for lunch with Rangers-supporting colleagues on Monday or Tuesday. They’ll think that’s because they take it really seriously and will have to smack anyone who slags their team for losing a cup final. No it isn’t. It’s becase they don’t take it seriously enough and have no intention of backing up their team when their team needs it. The people who can’t face defeat are the people who care about their own petty self-image more than their team’s good name. For me and so many thosuands of Bluenoses, we take our team and our respnsibility as Bluenoses so seriously that we WANT to be there to dismiss all slaggings as the rants of the ignorant. We want to show up with pride when we lose but hide away when we win lest folk think we’re boastful. The real Queens fans, like the real Rangers fans in Manchester, will today be gutted but proud of their team and they’ll be so flushed with excitement about the entire campaign which led the to this point that only a 6 or 7 goal defeat yesterday could have taken any edge off it. Like Rangers against Zenit, Queen of the South far from disgraced themslves against their more fancied opponents - the real Queens fans are too happy about yesterday to be bitter.

Yet, the real Rangers fans maybe, like me, have been enduring a bit of a rough time after our title loss on Thursday and the barrage of abuse which followed on from certain quarters. Put it this way, by the time I left the house for Hamden yestreday, I’d had to get on the PC to add the following pathetically angry comment to this blog:

There’s so many lovely posts on this thread. So many. And I’m gonnae take my time to reply to all the nice people in the days after this Cup final I’m about to set off for.

But, if for no other reason than to free my mind to properly roar on The Teds in the Cup Final, I have to comment on the level of bile and wilful ignorance I’ve encountered in the last 40 hours. Of course, there’s been a few snidey comments from fuckwits at work who’ve never been to a game in their lives - but that’s okay and there are plenty plastic “Rangers fans” who do the same to my decent Celtic-supporting colleagues. There are idiots on all sides and that’s just life. But I was just having my breakfast a few hours ago and decided to watch Setanta Sports news. The bar along the bottom of their screen was full of texts from celtic fans decrying Rangers as “lucky” to have got to the verge of four trophies. There were continual accusations of anti-football - which is, of course, a totally illogical term when applied to a team like ours - and every one of these myopic, vindictive, hate-filled texts (this all AFTER Celtic have won the league, remember - when these guys should be celebrating THEIR team!) were ended with a note about Tommy Burns and how much they loved him and miss him.

It was sickening. To see a peaceful man’s death USED as an elastopast cover on these people’s vile outpourings. All we’ve done this season is make the best of what we had - and people want to demonise us for it. All we are is a football team trying to win as much as possible for the fans who pay good money to follow that football team. And yet, according to TV radio and newspapers this last day, we’ve been either lucky or an insult to the game. Celtic won the league by just ONE WIN and one draw. If we were lucky they must have been pish. No they weren’t - Celtic are a quality side these days. They deserve all the plaudits they get but the insistence on persecuting Rangers - FOR LOSING - is shameful. Why on earth do people keep churning off this stat about our only getting one away win against top six teams???!!! As if it’s some sort of condemnation or a revelation of the cowardice at the soul of some myth about Rangers being BRILLIANT??!!! The fact is, we were effectively four poinst worse than Celtic this season - doesn’t matter where or how we won or dropped those points. It’s as relevant as me claiming that the fact we won all but one of our 19 home games means we “deserved ” (aaaaagggghhh!!) to win the SPL more than Celtic coz they lost one and drew however many.

Tommy Burns was an integral, proud and loved member of the Scotland set-up which defeated France at Hampden 18 months ago. Scotland sent the entire nation into delirium BY DEFENDING LIKE HEROES AND HITTING ON THE BREAK!

Now, apparently, that is evil.

Good to know we can now discount every defender who ever played for Celtic as being an anti-footballer!

No - I wouldn’t. I respect my opponents. I respect football.

Anti-football? Hilarious term. Anti-football is anything which wants to destroy the game of football - and that is people like Timahoy. Vindictive, petty scum with absolutely no self respect. Waited til we’d lost the league - BY A MASSIVE THREE WHOLE POINTS - before coming out his shell and even then he’s so full of bile that ye really wonder if he’s ever had a happy day in his life.

All through Martin O’Neill’s reign at Parkhead I defended that Celtic team as the best TRUE footballing Celtic team I’d ever seen. It was an abslute emabrassment to me to hear Rangers fans decry them as a mere long-ball team, when having won three league titles and reached a European final ANYONE WITH AN OUNCE OF KNOWLEDGE OF FOOTBALL knew they were so much more than that.

I didn’t enjoy seeing them win but I would never let that cloud my judgement of what constitutes football. Apparently defending well is a crime. Well whenever we’ve tried to play two up front we’ve defended like muppets - so maybe that’s a clue as to the more insidious reasons behind this STUPID yet NASTY campaign to denegrate a team for trying to give their fans as much silverware as possible.The desperation of elements of the diaspora to denegrate the art of defending is stomach-churning. It’s a delight in ignorance. It’s the glorification of stupidity. This bitterness is nothing to do with Rangers’ style of play - which is ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL to anyone who loves watching ball-playing centre-havles and overlapping full-backs with a savvy holding midfielder sat in front (ye know, anyone who likes ALL ASPECTS OF FOOTBALL) - it’s simply the usual clutching at any reason to justify their own vindictive, hate-filled self-disgust to themselves.

If we’re anti-football then Celtic are only three points-and a few goals more “pro-football”. And it took a pampered fucking 20-year-old millionaire to give these plumbs on the phone-ins the term they couldn’t even muster themselves. Anyone with ANY MEMORY of ANY FOOTBALL Messi says “anti-football” after being held at Ibrox. Sour grapes in anyone’s language but funny how that was singing the same tune as so many from East of the Trongate. will know that Argentinians and Barcelona players have no right whatsoever to attack anyone else for simply defending well when these teams are responsible for some of the most sickening cheating and on-field assaults the world has ever seen.

Anyone remember Ronald Koeman on Jesper Bolmqvist in the European cup at the Nou Camp? Broke his jaw with an off-the-ball elbow.

Anyone remember the name and nationality of the first two men to be sent off in a World Cup final?

Pedro Monzon and Gustavo Dezzotti are the names. Country? You fuckwits look it up - coz you certainly aint intersted in celebrating anything Celtic have done this season.

Anti-football? Anti-fucking Rangers more like. At least have the balls to admit yer a bigot.

And what about Strachan? Half-way through this season more than half the Celtic support wanted rid because “we don’t like his style of football”. Bullshit! They wanted rid because he couldnae beat Rangers. Not a fibre of integrity amongst them and even less comprehension of what constitutes aesthetics.

“We don’t like your style of play, Rangers!??!! No - you wouldn’t recognise “style” if it bit ye on the nose - you just don’t like Rangers. Fair enough - but trying to go after a team which performed heroically against Barca, Werder, Sporting and Fiorentina …? Just bitter - just twisted - just got ye in our back-pockets.

What Novo did on Thursday we are ashamed of. What Robson did to Christian Dailly in the first minute of an Old Firm match we only complained to Dailly about for not nailing him back. It IS a man’s game. Hartley put McCulloch out of the same game at Parkhead and I only ever thought that was McCulloch’s fault. It seems we’re allowed to praise Celtic for having a bit of dig - quite rightly to my mind - that when a Celtic player attempts to break bones it’s heroic. Yet when Rangers play committed but CLEAN football which keeps Deco, Ronaldinho and Messi at bay we’re somehow evil.

Sorry - I know this is where The Jim Traynors and Hugh Keevinses of the world want me but I’ve just watched the first part of the BBC Build-up to the Scottish Cup final and it’s the same level of unintelligent shite which gives credence to the muppets slating us for anti-football. Apparently Partick Thistle should have beaten us at Ibrox in the cup because they had one attack and we had about thirty. Ian McCall, Craig Levein, Pat Nevin and Dougie Donnelly all just sat there and happily called Kris Boyd’s equaliser against Thistle “Lucky”. yet, in the same breath they’re citing his great strike rate. So how the fuck can scoring one goal in thirty attacks, through a known serial scorer, be fucking lucky???!!! .

This is what wills on these cunts who can’t even let us lose in peace: Nazi bastards every one of you after-the-fact, ambulance-chasing, ethnic-cleansing twats. Thank god we have the likes of Bluebhoy and Tim Waits and Charles on here to remind us that vermin like you won’t be allowed to take over.

Oh dear. Oh dearie dear, Eck. Not proud. Seriously carried away with the emotion of the whole season. I’d become just the kind of person I most despise in football fandom - the kind of guy who doesn’t want to look at the positives among others and can’t wait to buy his Daily Record to get all wound up about the idiots amons the opposing support when we all know EVERY support has its idiots. But there is also a real point in there about the lack of basic intelligence in football reporting. Anyone who remembers the coverage of Greece’s 2004 European Champiosnhip win will know exactly what I’m talng about. An Henry, Zidane, Totti, Beckham or Nedved has so many skills and so much technical guile that when losing to a team of journeyman pros like Greece, the ire must ALL be directed at les bleus, Engerland, the Czechs or Italy or whoever the “less gifted” team has defeated. If you have less talent then you must be exerting far greater effort than your oppoenet to even keep the score respectable. When Rangers are actually DEFEATING the likes of Werder, Fiorentina and Celtic then the effort required is unargaubly epic, gargatuan, heroic. A defeat by Queen of the South was a very reasonable proposition BECAUSE of such efforts being given in the longest campaign any Scottish team has EVER undertaken/endured.

After 67 games, there were people out there just DYING to judge us only on our 68th. I sensed again that hatred for our club and a real attempt at persecution by school-girl reverse psychology which so many enemies of Rangers indulge in with absolutely no self-awareness. It turns my stomach when Rangers fans behave in that manner - yesterday I was emotionally weaker than I have ever been as a Rangers fan and I let the small-mindedness of non Rangers fans get to me. It was simple fear about a massive game translated into anger.

It was not helped by the fact I had yet to collect my Cup Final ticket from the Ibrox ticket office. I must have been drunk when I got the usual email confirming I had a brief - I ALWAYS have my tickets posted out but I guess, like Rangers, I just wanted to make everything as exciting, difficult and last-minute as possible. I drove out to Ibrox early doors. I drove along Broomloan Road, up to the portakabins of our ticket centre and very nearly shat myself as all the shutters were down and a big sign said “not open til after 26th May”. For some reason I drove along the back of the Govan Stand and parked outside the Rangers Superstore. I think I wanted to believe the ticket office was still in Edmiston House. It isn”t. I parked. I spoke to a parking steward. He said the ticket office was supposed to be open but wasn’t. My heart sank beyond all belief. He told me there was something going on at the front of the Main Stand and I should enquire there. The sun beat down as I passed the statue of John Greig and I told myself not to panic that, at worst, I could probably get a ticket outside Hampden because sales had been slow. But the sunny weather told me there’d be a huge crowd at Hampden now - a full house. I walked to the beautiful Main Stand front doors and, of course, the wee crowd there were just people on official hospitality junkets - all in suits and cheap sunglasses with Rangers ties, waiting for their executive coach and free bevvy. I kept walking back round to the Broomloan and couldn’t cut up to the ticket office because the car park was partially fenced off. Huge plant machinery moved huge piles of sand in and out of the Bluebelled steel gates designed by Archibald Leitch. I looked into our stadium and saw the grass was gone. The new pitch was being laid. The new season was already starting and it was as if the Scottish Cup final was over and I’d been too slow. Thsi was a living anxiety dream.

I forlornly took the long route on foot round Broomloan Road, behind that Group 4 Security depot, up the tarmac road to the Ticket Centre portacabins again. I re-examined the notice on the door. In writing far too small to be of any reassurance I was told uncollected tickets would be kept at Argyle House. I don’t know what was going on in my head and my heart but it was definitely something to do with the tumultuous nature of this season and thw fact it was about to be framed in either dissapointment or victory. The season had been so humunguos that there was a fin de siècle aura around the whole day. I was being unintentionally over-emotionally reflective. For the last in a 68-game sequence was upon us and there are few chances I’d ever experience this length of season and this much intensity again. Suddenly I felt far too scruffy to enter even the reception area of Argyle house. It was as if Bill Struth was watching me. And he was tutting. Without knowing it, I’d walked a full circuit of our palatial stadium - an icon and centrepiece of comfort and reassurance and pride for all the generations of Bluenoses before me. I’d been reading in a newly-purchased book about the construction and development of Ibrox every night during the preceeding week. I’d been reading about Archibald Leitch, Wiliam Wilton, Bill Struth. Combine that with what I was writing about, thinking about, watching, breathing and living during that same week and the games I was attending and - man - I was fit to burst with a sense of moment.

And I still didnae huv a ticket. If I missed today’s game I’d die.

Jeans and an auld t-shirt - a clapped-out jaiket. I was originally just nipping along to the ticket office - it took me all my time to remember not to go in my slippers - but now I was entering Argyle House. The last time I was in here was to meet and interview Sandy Jardine for a book I was writing with Ronnie Esplin. Ronnie interviewed Sandy Jarine. I just sat in the great man’s office trying not to faint with adoration. Sandy looked then as he does now, as if he could still give you a solidly classy 90 minutes. Here was I, twenty years younger than him, fat as fuck and unable to organise my seat for Hampden. Fucking disgrace to the club I supported.

The fellah behind the desk couldnae have been nicer. Efficient but security-conscious and always curteous. This was Rangers class. I had a copy of my e-mail from Rangers confirming my ticket. He asked me to sign it and leave it with him for his records. He gave me my envelope and wished me all the best for the game. I thanked him profusely for his help. I walked back out into the Govan sunshine and pulled the brief from the enevelope and kissed the silvery image of the Scottish Cup emblazoned thereon. I had my ticket. I walked back towards the car and, as I did, I caught the end of a converastion between grandfather and grandson as they entered the Rangers Superstore from the Copland Road side:

“…but WHY did they get killed?”

“because they got all squashed together and couldn’t breathe.”

Fuck’s sake. That was me. Into the car. Engine on. Radio on. Pretend yer looking at yer Glasgow A-Z and just have a right guid greet.

I hate people exploting the deaths of others to be mawkishly emotive but I honestly couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t so much the heart-breakingly innocent reference to the Ibrox disaster as witnessing the early education of another nascent Bluenose. The wee fellah could have been asking his grandpaw “who was Biran Laudrup” and it’d probably have had exactly the same effect. I was gone - a burst bubble, a slobbering mess.

It was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I’d become all Little House On The Prairie. I was suddenly a scene from The Waltons. I have a job I hate and haven’t had a week of good sleep or exercise for over six months.These are the things I should worry about. I have a great home life and smashing family and friends and all my faculties and nothing wrong with me a bit of sleep, exerise and dieting won’t cure. These are the things I should be grateful for. But here I was greeting like a big wean in a way I’ve never gret at a funeral or at anytime other than after a sensationally great football moment … or watching Steel Magnolias. I knew this season was already one of the greatest ever in our history - so I was intenseley happy - but I was also shit scared we’d leave ourselves open to more slagging from people who were now beginning to get to me coz I was so knackered, frazzled, drained. Moreover, the joy that this season has brought us all was yet to have a proper venting. The post-match celebrations in Florence and Lisbon were great but the overall effort in every competition of 2007/2008 needed to be commemorated. The tears needed a cathartic trophy-lifting by which to flow justifiably. Manchester’s memories had been denied us by the neddishness of a few hundred. Now Scottish Cup triumph could be taken away by the sheer weight of 67 previous matches. I needed an outlet for my worries AND my pride. The sense of history from an unexpected, unintentional circuit of Ibrox on Cup Final day just cranked it all up a notch and just at the very moment I was drinking in the joy of having my place at the coalface of supporting this club once again, a wee kid barely old enough to talk rattled home just how priveleged I was to be involved with this club and its support. Rangers have always meant far too much to me and this game, this day was throwing more emotion than I could bear into what was already the most draining season of my life. Of all our lives.

My first games following Rangers were in the early eighties, still at school but old enough to suffer as horribly as any football fan ever did when his team were struggling. My first Scottish Cup final was an object and abject lesson in how bad we were in that period. It was the 1982 final, our seventh in a run of eight succesive Scottish Cup finals which I’d grown up watching on telly. Barely four years after we’d swept all before us twice in three seasons (In NO WAY a “forgotten achievement” Mr McCallum!!), Rangers again took the lead in the Scottish Cup final. I danced around the North Enclosure with my aunt and uncle. Then a guy called Alex McLeish curled in an equaliser right in front of me. By the end Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen had won 4-1. Strachan and McGhee also scored that day. Next year we played the Cup Winners Cup holders all but off the park as the same two teams contested my second live Scottish Cup Final. We lost 1-0 to an extra-time Eric Black goal. Days like that made auld Eck determined to get every pleasure out of todays’ Cup finals for the sake of young Eck. He’d fucking earned it.

And so did Rangers. Fair play to Queen of the South for the way they came back. It was glorious for them. It was horrible for us to watch it - especially if it was right in front of ye as it was for us punters over that side of the North Stand as it’s now called. But we knew it had to be this way. We knew this Rangers team had made that deal with difficulty at the start of the season. Our team bit down hard. We found energy from some previously un-tapped pore. Davie Weir and Barry Fergyuson played their 65th games of the season for club and country. Carlos Cuellar played his 64th game of the season FOR RANGERS and set another record in this record-breaking season. I knew where my pal Big James was sitting with his good lady wife. He’d given me a note of his seat numbers on the Friday and I hoped I’d be in the North Stand too so I coulc go and say hello. Was great to see them before the game and lovely to have someone else to go and share the joy with afterwards. Big James said to me “I know whit yer next rant on yer blog should be mate - just say “Game over. Season Over. Rangers won. Goodnight. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”" At the end of the League Cup final I’d turned to the guy next to me and said “see ye at the UEFA cup final”. We were both only half joking. yesterday I said “see ye at next year’s UEFA Cup final” and we were a little more serious. But only a little.

Kris Boyd headed in Beasley’s cross. We then kept the ball for the remaining 18 minutes of normal time and two minutes, fifty seconds of injury time. We gave Queen of the South a free kick at the edge of the box in the very last gasp of this marathon season. Why the hell not? We wouldn’t want to finish it “easy” would we? One more jangle of those surviving nerves was definitely required - just for old time’s sake. Queens hit the wall - the ball bounced over to the touch-line directly below my seat. The referee could hardly even raise his arms to properly signal full time. Was he blowing for a shy or a free kick instead? Only the sight of Rangers players slumping into each others’ arms told us it was all over.

We lifted the cup after our third Cup Final of the season. We applauded Queen of the South up and down those podium steps just as we’d done for Dundee United and Zenit St Petersburg and again, The Rangers played a show-piece without their Red and Black socks. But we recognised them okay! We knew it was Rangers, despite the lack of extra-time and pens. Half the Queens players took a bow in front of us too. Thoroghly deserved. Heroes every one of them. But then our own team began their lap of honour at my part of the ground and, for the final time in 2007/2008, we applauded and lauded heroism incarnate.