SENSATIONAL! (Bairns … 0 GERS .. 1)

Depending on what mood our bitter wee facial-tick-of-hate detractors find themselves in, we’re told that all Rangers fans are either white trash or the government. No middle ground. Just one or the other. We’re either the font of all evil because we run about in shell suits, drinking buckey, singing “fuck the pope”. Or we’re the root of all evil because we’re Hollyrood, Westminster, the judiciary and the Masonic lodge all congealed into one huge rolled-up trouser leg of nudge-nudge, wink-wink, brotherhood subterfuge and conspiracy.

Whaaaaaat-evurrrr! Talk tae the sovvy ring coz the bowler hat ain’t listening.

But watchmenow as I put some cabinet minister spin on our last three results and hear-me-one-time as I take the thick-as-mince pile of blubber that was the first week in August, remove it from its trailer park home, do up its hair, nails and make-up, shove silicon in its boobs, suck lard oot the thighs and re-enamel its teeth before the big REVEAL to a weepy husband and extended family who declares how much they always loved it … especially now that it’s been completely transformed for the sake of a 100% exploitative TV programme shown on UK TV style:

Oh yes - What a transformation in just seven days: In fact - even better! - what a transformation in LESS than seven days (We kicked off at 3 against Liverpool, 12:30 at Falkirk): Lost four goals last Saturday to nothing in reply; Lost two goals last Tuesday to one in reply; Now, this weekend, we’ve scored one and kept a clean sheet. Keep improving like this and by May 2010, The Rangers will be CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE!!!

… and not just at rioting and buying refs.

Fuck it. We won. We won at a difficult venue against a team buoyed as much by our recent travails as by knowledge of their own strength, spirit, organisation and ability. Falkirk aint no Liverpool but they’re a damn sight better than Kaunas. The rain lashed down and the ground is ridiculuosly shallow and exposed on two sides. This was a return to Lithuania but without the potential prize of a place in Europe’s top competition. This was a return to Lithuania knowing nothing we did could make up for the loss in Lithuania. This was the kind of test of character no-one romanticises or gives out laurels for passing:

The Gers were on a hiding to nothing yesterday. Missing our captain, vice-captain, star defender, most controversial close-season signing and spirited Iberian dynamo. New players made their first competitive start for the club. Old players played at right back. I sat next to a man who even criticised the way Ally McCoist was standing on the touch-line - and I mean the way his sleeves were arranged!! He didn’t even start on any complaint as substantial our assistant manager’s demeanour. He was far too busy giving a running commentary of disgust on every single toch a Rangers player did or did not have. It seemed like the etire row “O” nodded in agreement, backed him up. The Gers were in a miserable position, among an away support so largely ready to hate them and a home support which always will.

And they won. Rangers won. With no hint of gratitude or expectancy of anything but “the same old pish”, they won. With nowt but ten-to-fifteen minutes, tops, of reasonably concerted posession and most of the game dug into our own box with no midfield outlet, Rangers won. At nil-nil we conceded a penalty and we won. Our captain for the day - lambasted by even lapdogs like me for his lack of speed at that free kick in Kaunas and spewed at by that man next to me and a thousand other “Rangers fans” this Saturday for taking a fresh-air shot at a first half pass-back - saved the spot kick with a fantastic piece of come-back keeping.

We waited a few minutes. “Fuck face” Whittaker, as the man next to me called him - “What ye gonnae dae noo, fuck face??!” - played a great ball to Boyd who flicked on to Lafferty, who cut across goal and Velicka buried it in a net which seemed so close I could touch it from the third-back row of the wee North stand. I erupted into a frenzy of bilious relief. While everyone was cheering too hard for my words to be heard I yelled my delight at and belief in The Gers players who had “got it right fucking up” these “disloyal bastards” in the same row as me.

“Shut these cunts up, Big man - ye’ve shut these cunts right up!”. So went my praise for a Lithuanian I’d thought a great signing even before we got him. I declined to comment on the fact Boyd had once again failed to score in a match he’d started because, at that point, the game was only an hour old, and this was the kind of game even I thought Boyd should play in, and Krissy had just played a key part in laying up thd goal - something I say he does so rarely that he should never lead thd line alone.

Instead, “Back the fucking team!” emitted from my over-emotional gob, just as the general clamour subsided. I got a few looks. But mostly of “I couldnae have heard that right - naebody in their right mind would come to a Rangers game to support Rangers!”

And then, just as the man sat next to me said “Well, Whittaker did okay there”, his friend leaned across, made eye contact with his mate from the We Hate Rangers Rangers Supporters Club, pointed a venomous finger at our technical area and spat “He was gonnae take Velicka aff as well!”. No respite for Walter. Even when we score the winning goal, it’s a criticism for the manager who brought us Nine-In-A-Row and the clubs best ever run in the only two European competitions still in existence.

Against all that, Rangers won. They fucking won.

Go out there with top-of-the-range players and rattle in six goals and The Bears would want to know why the couldn’t do that on Tuesday. More than fair point. But to show all the same signs of fear and fatigue - mental and/or physical - which they demonstrated on Tuesday yet get over it sufficiently to grind out a win in a game in which we never looked secure, for which we woudl never receive any praise … That’s balls. That’s guts. that’s TRUE grit and, in my book, that’s fucking SENSATIONAL.

I wanted yesterday’s scene at Falkirk the way Wayne Rooney likes his prostitutes. I wanted it grey, wet and miserable. There was to be no escaping the aura of Kaunas so I wanted to head right back into as dreich and mournful a situation as Tuesday’s, and this time dig our way right back out of it. Face yer fear - face yer fuck-up: Cure it. The fact it took me just five minutes to find a spare ticket outside the ground was a sign of the sickeningly quick “back-lash” against Walter and his side, against the club in general. Quarter of a million invaded Manchester to glory-hunt, but we couldn’t sell out our 3,000 allocation at Falkirk at the very frst chance we had to repay the players who got us to only our fourth Euro final with a bit of loyalty. They gave it their all for the longest season in our history - we couldn’t give them one day of blind allegiance in return.

On Friday night I sat drinking with a good friend, a Dunfermline fan and great guy in every respect except that he utterly detests even the mention of Rangers. Whenever, in discussing football in general, I happen to mention my team in anything approaching a positive light, the sneer is wheeled out. Insult the Pars by way of retort and, of course, I’m merely proving that all Old Firm fans are just contemptuously arrogant glory hunters with no real understanding of the need to stay true to yer team through thick and thin.

The next day I’m sat in a row of people who proved my Fife friend 70% correct in his conveniently cyclical bigotry. Being AT the game gives ye a 30% loyalty rating. What ye do thereafter is, as Kenny Miller will tell you, so much more important. Rangers turned up and did just enough on the pitch. I don’t think The Bears in the away stand or the away Royal Highland Show tent did enough.

However, it was good to see the management quickly diagnose this problem and send in the subs. Carlos Cuellar and Nacho Novo began walking up the stairs towards me and, next thing I know they’re squeezing between me and the Setanta cameraman at the back of the stand to get into their seats among the Bears. I instinctively reach back to shake both by the hand and, as the first half draws to a close, the kids and the mums start piling over to get their autographs and their photos taken with the stars. The poor man next to me - who is a friendly guy, as long as ye don’t like anything about the current Rangers team - starts going on about Health and Safety and how the players don’t want to be annoyed. To me it’s obvious this man just wants to dislike what everyone else likes.

Suddenly I get that great reminder of what The Gers support is really about: Family, excitement, a good day out and that feeling of awe when those players are in our midst. Hero-worship and wearing the colours. Focus and enthusiasm. Getting yer new strip when it hits the shops, getting it autographed by Wee Nacho. Last time the wee man was at a league game I was shaking my head at him for a different kind of shirt-selling at Pittodrie - the very reason he was sat behind me yesterday. Yet, the moment I knew he’d be walking past me I had to thank him for Fiorentina, Athens, Red Star Belgrade and all those Old Firm games: Just coz I’m blindly loyal it doesn’t mean to I ain’t as hypocritical as the next man.

I don’t want to meet my heroes - I prefer to worship from afar. But when they’re there in front of you you have to say “Thanks”. And those who like to criticise my heroes from afar look pretty pathetic when the undiluted love of those players and that team pours all over them with the innocent enthusiasm it did up the back of Falkirk’s North Stand yesterday. These knee-jerk Bears aren’t in the majority - they’re just the loudest. The mums, kids and big cowardy-custrad bams like me are the ones who’ll keep the team going through times of such comparatively minor “famine” as a season of just one European tie.

Lump all the apparently futile balls we like up to Lafferty on the left - as long as he’s wearing that RFC on his chest, I’ll support it. Lose possession as often as it takes in midfield - as long as yer willing to get back between the opposition and the Rangers goal to defend the mistake then it’s as beautiful as those swans sitting on the grass banking of the section of canal outside Falkirk’s away stand, or the views ye get if ye get off the M9 and take the back roads through Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch on yer way back tae Glesgae. It’s about doing something different. It’s about comitting to something which makes a life less ordinary. If ye want to be reasonable, become an accountant at the weekend too - and start questioning the very notion of attending a sporting fixture in the pissing rain on a Saturday morning.

Welcome to the new SPL season, troops. “It’s gonnae be a long one”? When did it ever stop?

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Published:
08.10.08 / 8pm
Category:
News