WHAT GOES AROUND … (Sellik … 2 GERS … 4)

>On the last day of school you’re allowed to bring in games and toys. On the last day of your job your colleagues take you out for a two-hour lunch, give you a card and a pressie and the boss lets you away early. How appropriate then that for the last ever rant on these blogging pages, The Rangers have done the talking for me. I could never properly explain how much I love that team. Today, however, I don’t have to. Even a homosexual mysoginist can understand my stalking of Kristin-Scott Thomas if he watches my DVD of The English Patient. Even a Rangers Trustee could understand my blind love for The Rangers if they saw our play today.

What’s not to love.

Belief. Determination. Focus. Application. Speed. Skill. Aggression. Flair. Muscle. Panache. Ruthlesness. The goal of all goals from Daniel Cousin; The cathartic, exorcising brace from Kenny Miller; The sensational right-foot rocket from Pedro Mendes and the sublime few minutes of possession football which preceded it; And - bless me! - the most just of deserts for Artur Boruc: All this was subsumed by a 7,000-strong corner of noise and colour which out-sang and out-believed the 53,000 people all around it. Red and Black socks rattled home breathtaking finishes then bee-lined for the technical area of and/or the south east corner of blue. Players, manager, staff, Chairman, supporters - all united in spirit, act, triumph, joy and glory:

Make mine a pint of Blue Velvet.

Let us bask in the blue velvet, let us roll around in the warm, smooth, soothing embrace of a one-off performance which rates alongside any in our history. They were missing Scott MacDonald and Venegoor of Hesselink (for all but a minute), they foolishly dropped Robson to the bench, the result hasn’t won us any leagues or cups and we’re only four games into the SPL season - hey, it actually goes along with something of a tradition for Celtic under Strachan in that they lose the first derby of the season but go on to lift the title - so no-one’s counting any chickens. But we’re ALL counting the goals we scored at Parkhead today: Four. Four large.

And we looked like we had a few more in the locker just in case. As one-off wins go, this was about as resonant and enjoyable
as one can get.

I always remember Alec Bell, a great Rangers fan from Ardrossan, telling me the story about the day he was at Parkhead as a kid and saw Rangers win 5-1. Alec told me this story in the early eighties. He regailed me with this recollection in the days where, unlike the last twenty years, our glories were a very definite thing of the past. He recounted this memory in the days when we only wanted to discuss the past. Coming back from Aberdeen, Dundee and even Ibrox itself during the period 1979-1986, there was too often no pleasure to be had in discussing the present. Alec and a few of the other Baby Boomer Bears knew they had to work on us tots to keep the next generation coming through:

Travelling to games on the Stevenston Masonic RSC bus, the younger Bears would listen to the adults telling us tales of yore. The thought of scoring five at Celtic was then incredible to us cubs because, in those days, Rangers could barely muster a crowd to fill one of our four stands or finish in the top half of the Premier League. The thought of winning by any score at Parkhead was a bit ambitious - the prospect of winning there by four clear goals seemed like sheer fantasy. Alec was telling no lies though. Nowadays we have the books, the stats, the Rangers Historian: All can be verified. Now the cold, hard facts can be added to the cinemascope rollercoaster recollections: September 10th, 1960 - Scott, Millar, Brand, Wilson, Davis: Celtic … 1 Rangers … 5. The funny thing is we won the league that season by a single point from Kilmarnock, who we’ve today just edged into second place on goal difference with another momentous, historic and downright LOVELY destruction of Celtic in the east end of Glasgow.

This wasn’t just a win - this was a statement of intent and a marker for the immediate future. I began the Fat Eck years on 27th August 2000, as we lost 6-2 in the very same fixture. We still had our moments in Europe over the next few seasons, we still had championships and trebles in near distance, we still had another pumping to give Celtic that very season - but Martin O’Neill’s nascent Parkhead reign took a massive shot of adrenaline from what was more than just three points and local bragging rights. Today, eight years to the weekend later, as I finally give yese all an indefinite break from my yabbering squawk, there can be no denying Walter Smith and the Teds of Bear have done a little bit more than pull off an interesting, early-season away derby win: We’ve skelped Celtic upside down, yes, but we’ve also take the earliest possible revenge for last season’s campaign-defining defeats at parkhead and given our club and our support an injection of confidence big enough to make Michelle McManus enter the latest edition of Britain’s Next Top Model … I know I sent my own portfolio and showreel to “Make me a Super Model” as soon as Kirk Broadfoot started impersonating Wullie Henderson in the first twenty minutes of the second half:

For all those Celts expecting Four In A row - they got it a lot earlier and lot nastier than they imagined. For all those Bears who expected a hangover from last season but worried about how long it would last - now ye know: FIZZ, FIZZ, PLONK! - Alcaselzters dropped into the glass of water with Cousin’s one-man disection of a defense, dissolved into bubbles with Kenny Miller’s sweet-as-a-nut volley off the deck for 2-1, swallied doon in a wanner and straight into the nervous system with all the merciless accuracy of Pedro Mendes’ baw-ripper into the onion bag and, we’re oot oor kip, hud a shower, hud a can of Irn Bru, a bit of cold pizza, two Macaroon bars and a sausage roll fae Greggs and READY TO HIT THE TOWN ONCE AGAIN with Kenny Miller’s deliciously easy control-and-side-foot home from seven gloriously open yards.

Whit?!! Me? Naw I was SURE he was gonnae put it away. I wisnae worried he’d miss it!! Never! :-)

OH MY GOD - YOU SOLD KENNY! Numpties right enough.

It’s the confidence, troops. It’s the energy, folks. It’s the Panzer squadron-like momentum, Peepelle: THEY’RE ALL BACK … TEN-FOLD!!

So now, as I tidy up behind the wake of devestation left by the terrifying progress of the crack troops of Walter Smith’s Blue and White Army, it’s time to take out the trash:

For everyone who wanted to undermine our run to the UEFA Cup final with what happened against Kaunas, today throws the proper perspective on their hysterical negativity: They must now reconsider and re-edit the historical time-line. When I’m sitting on that RSC bus, in twenty years, maybe I’ll have to convince a few youths in blue that good times are always round the corner (Jeeze, it feels like I’ve been doing that for the last eight years when we’re clearly in the midst of some real glory days!). So where once it would have been “Yeah, I can’t help thinking about Kaunas when I think about Zenit and Manchester and that glorious UEFA Cup run”, now it’ll be “Yeah - yer right, son - we did get humiliated by a Lithuanian team one season but a couple months before that we’d reached the UEFA Cup final and just after it we went to Parkhead and won 4-2 with some of the greatest football we’ve ever played: The Zenit team who did us in the UEFA Cup final had the great Arshavin in attack - aye, that’s right, him that won European Footballer of the Year three years running - They were managed by Dick Advocaat - proving Sir David Murray knew how to pick a gaffer - and they humped Man U in the Super Cup final and went on to lift the Champions League the following season. That Celtic team we humped at home only scored their second three minutes into injury time - about two of the “faithful” Celtic support had stayed to see it - and at one point I genuinely thought we were gonnae win by five or six …”

There’s a lot of us today - some of the Rangers players and management included - who were utterly gutted when Nakamura pulled it back to 4-2 with the second-last kick of the game. Under Walter Smith, Rangers will always score at Parkhead - he’ll always make Celtic sweat like hell for anything they want to take from us. Since his return, Waldo has won all three of his home Old Firm games - scoring six without reply - and two of his four trips to The Piggery and, with Rangers scoring on each occassion, we’ve amassed EIGHT goals in those four away games. We’ll always get a win there every now and then under Walter. Historically, on average, we’ll always manage to overturn Celtic on their own patch every two seasons. But very, very rarely do we ever get the chance to utterly annihilate them. Today we only destroyed them. Complete annihilation was denied by that Nakamura free-kick. Allan McGregor was raging. Walter and Ally were downbeat. Teds who know they’ll ALWAYS be there, follow-following, were a little dissapointed. But, generally, this was a day of utter triumph and coruscating, scintilating, devestating, penetrating, motivating, enervating, subjgating DOMINATION.

Rangers were immense.

But were you?

Now, today, tonight is for celebration. Now is not the day for loyalty. That day - that night - came in Lithuania, came with the sale of Carlos Cuellar. It has always been the same. You prove your worth in the bad times. In the early eighties I knew about the early sixties - it was difficult but doable to maintain faith and hope then: All-consuming love certainly helps. In early August 2008 it was fucking easy to be loyal coz I knew about every other month in 2008 and everything else we’ve done in the last twenty years. Yet, when Kaunas eliminated us, some so-called Rangers fans couldn’t even allow their memories to extend back by a few months or permit their reasoned hope to look forward by a few weeks. We can all nail our colours to the mast in times of victory - it’s in times of loss and humiliation you prove yourself. Your loyalty, your worth as a Bluenose, your deserving of the joy today has brought was determined by your backing of the club, the manager, the chairman and the players when we suffered bad results, when we lost big name players. Those who doubted, those who slagged, those who protested - todays’ win is not yours to celebrate. You had no belief, you had no loyalty - you have no right.

Harsh? Yes. And I’m not aiming at those who have a moan and a grumble - we ALL do that. But the leaders and spokespeople of the knee-jerkers are the harshest around - so proud of their merciless attitude, so determined to insult and humiliate the people whose efforts brought them into the Rangers fold in the first place. And, worst of all, they choose to attack when Rangers are down, when we’re weak and vulnerable. When the club needs them most is when they’re least supportive (”supportive”; from the root “SUPPORT”): I’ll say my negative piece when we’re up, when there’s energy and belief-a-plenty - when we’re all best armed against internecine divisions.

And I’ll happily remind everyone that I thought Walter Smith would be terrible for us in Europe but just what we wanted for Old Firm games and the SPL. I was gutted by this fact because I thought, when Walter was brought back home, focussing our ambitions solely on Old Firm games was backward and tacky. Yet Walter proved me SOOOOOO wrong about his European capabilities - last season anyway - and, anyway, at the very time we’d asked him back to replace Paul Le Guen, I made it clear that I in no way blamed Walter Smith for any failings that would come our way thereafter. I knew it wasn’t Walter’s fault he was back at Ibrox - it was the Follow Follow/RST-type fans who got so loud and short-term that Murray was forced to give “us” what we seemed to be baying for.

This blog and its archive will float in cyber space forever more - check out the January 2007 archive, below left, for a reminder of my attitudes when Walter returned.

I knew Walter was a legend, that he deserved 100% loyalty from us and I waited, knowing that the very people who hounded him out in the first place (”I’m bored of winning endless Scottish Championships - that’s all we’ve done since I started supporting Rangers seven years ago: I must have European success”), would be the very people who had brought him back (”So what if Le Guen’s got us into Europe after Xmas - he husane won in his first two Old Firm derbies!! I only want to beat Celtic!”) and also the same people who would try to hound him out again two minutes after a triumphant first full season back (”Who cares about European finals, winning both domestic cups, holding Barcelona, humping Lyon away and taking Celtic to the last game of the season - that’s not what it’s all about - I want … erm … I want … erm - I just WANT SOMETHING TO HAPPEN THAT’S DIFFERENT TO WHAT I WANTED TO HAPPEN LAST WEEK??!!! I deserve better!!!”).

But it always comes down to lessons taught by The Godafther. When things go wrong for Rangers - when we seem up against it - you must remember the unfortunate character of Frankie Pentangeli in the sequel. When Frankie tells Michael “I don’t have your brain for the big deals, Michael” he admits that his Don’s mental machinations, the moves and strategems of the Head of the family, are beyond his low intellect: Frankie is a capo but he’s a street guy. He’s a great soldier, maybe even a useful captain - but he’s no general or war-time president. Do any of us really think we know better than Sir David Murray when it comes to running Rangers?? Do any of us think we really know better than Walter Smith when it comes to picking a team?? The first sign of true intelligence is to acknowledge how much you don’t know. Frankie didn’t listen to his own advice. He started to think Michael wasn’t doing things right. The short-term results were bad and he declared his intention to reject and bring down the Corleone regime. When, a few Michael strokes of tactical genius later, the Corleones showed they’d just been laying low, biding their time for the biggest of moves, Franie - far from sharing in the success - had to kill himself.

When David Murray sells Cuellar and buys Pedro Mendes, I go with it. When Walter Smith drops Kris Boyd altogether and brings back big Danny Cousin, I go with it. I know I “don’t have the head for the big deals and the clever moves”. I know I’m just a supporter. But I have a basic memory and a basic Rangers personality: You have faith in the people who’ve provided you with far more good times than bad - you give loyalty to those who’ve gone so many extra miles for you. When they win - you win.

Murray, Walter - everybody in The Rangers Family; We made our moves today. We slaughtered those who’d dared to slate us. Yesterday, as I drove around Elderslie trying to find Jonstone Burgh Junior’s ground, I listened to Radio Scotland. They quite rightly mourn the passing of Bob Crampsey but they know not why: Because, apart from all his other amazing qualities, Bob Crampsey was the last guarantor of sanity in BBC Scotland Sportsound debates. You woudl blush to be tabloid-hysterical in the presence of a man like Crampsey. But now the idiots have taken over and they’ve taken so many perma-enraged football fans with them: Jim Traynor, a man who emits not one millilitre of love for the game, yesterday posited the inevitability of fans assaulting referees in the stadiums or in the streets if officials continued to get decisions wrong. Referees get no more decisions wrong now than they ever have but these scumbags have decied to escaltae it to the proportions of a national outcry and one which reasonably demands physical retribution. Unbelievable. I wonder how referees can be bothered to enter a stadum these days - my respect for and gratitude towards them increases every week.

Similairly, today, Radio Scotland decalred it’s AMAZEMENT at the Rangers team selection. If referee Dougie McDonald survived his horrifically close inspection today, it would be Walter Smith’s tactics getting it. There’s sure to be an outcry, said Richard Gordon on BBC Radio Scotland - coz, no matter what happens, we’re gonane fucking make sure there is.

What I find amazing is the idea that there should be any controversy about Kris Boyd being dropped for such a game. The way we battared Celtic physically and out-moved them athletically and out-thought them tactically, would not have been possible had Kris been playing in this one. When we’re squaring endless balls acorss the face of the goal against Hibs or Hamilton then - yes - Kris Boyd will be the perfect striking choice. Yet when we’re continually told by the Murray and Bain-haters that Rangers need a huge squad, the moment we utilise that depth of personnell everyone suddenly can only think of eleven players for the whole season. I can think of three Andrius Velicka goals against Celtic off the top of my head - no outcry about his absence today - and at least two of Velicka’s goals came at Parkhead: The only time Kris Boyd has scored at Parkhead was against The Faroe Islands.

Daniel Cousin clearly has both the best attacking ability and worst attitude of any player at Ibrox. If he’s all about the money, what better way to finally get him to perform this season than by allowing him the biggest shop-window Scottish domestic football can offer, 24 hours before the most frantic day of the transfer window. We needed a physical presence - we needed to buffet and harass Celtic’s midfield AND back-line. Remember Robson and Hartley assaulting Dailly and McCulloch in the first Parkhead clash last season? They were quite right to get steamed into us - the mistake was that we let them away with it. Not today. Tell Cousin to chase the money and knock Celtic out the way while he’s doing it: Brilliant. It’s almost as if Walter Smith knows what he’s doing. And I don’t think I’m any genius for having worked that out over the last few decades - the evidence is in the trophies, in the results.

If we’re gonnae ditch anyone tomorrow, I’d rather it was Barry Ferguson. We played as a UNIT today - a true unit - a true team. There’s no “B” or “F” in team … or unit. Again, it’s with reluctance I say this. Again I refer you to my January 2007 archive, below left, for a reminder of my attitudes formed about Barry when PLG left but, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE LAST EIGHT YEARS, I will need to leave it up to you guys to continue the Bazza debate online. S’no up tae me to start or finish these internet debates anymore. I’ll only do it in the pub now …

Nope. No sentimentalist shite now, Eck. We had all that in the last rant. That was the thread for farewells. Today is the time for just fucking LEAVING.Today we only talk about THE TEDDY BEARS! This is indeed a Valediction Forbidding Mourning - The Teds played in a way which just cannot leave ye in any way sad. What a way to go out! So - come one - let’s get back intae the events of the day: Where wiz ah? Oh aye - team selection …

Charlie Adam? Surprise choice, yes but - fuck me - as with the selection of Miller and Cousin - it was plainly obvious Walter knows we need a way in behind the Celtic defence which counters the fact we usually have less posession at Parkhead than any other ground in Scotland. Charlie stands there and swings those balls from almost the half-way line into the Celtic box, where Cousin’s height and Miller’s speed can compensate for any lack of numbers in the Celtic half. Against Aberdeen or Hearts we may be able to hit the by-line and pull the ball back across goal for Boydey - but against Celtic at Parkhead in recent years we’ve toiled to get forward in strength. There always seems to be three miles between the centre-circle and their goal line - anyone in blue getting to the edge of their box is usually knackered, dehydrated, half-naked and utterly alone of friends and surrounded by hostiles by the time he gets there. This time we were gonnae by-pass that space with a few long balls and then, when we found our feet, dance up towards that Celtic box together, knocking the ball about between us as we did. Ye need ball players to do that. Charlie Adam is a ball player:

Today we began with the spectacular: Snappy, crisp passing and resolute defending was stabilising our game: You can always tell when Rangers are gonnae play well at Parkhead. We’re good from the get-go - we never start poorly and suddenly get better: There’s always a lack of presence or total presence from the beginning. Today we were streets ahead in terms of shape, desire and sharpness. The possession was becoming more confident with every minute. And then Mendes, who I had worried would be muscled out of the game but ended up running it, sent a spectacular one-touch-on-the-turn ball over his shoulder and down Celtic’s left flank to Cousin. The spectacular had only just begun: Cousin attacked Wilson, went past him and leaned into him until the by-line approached; then the Gabonese goal-getter found another gear, took Wilson on the outside and, as we all screamed for him to cut it back to the wide-open Miller, he noted Boruc was expecting the same and found the barest of spaces between that fat fuck and his inside post: A slashing shot, on the end of a disecting run, stabbed into the far corner of the net and sliced Celtic more completely than many goals you’ll see scored at parkhead. We were more amazing than Barcelona were on the same pitch last season. Most of our players were off the pitch celebrating with Ally and Kenny in the dug-out. We pissed all over the living room rug of our enemy.

The only way the utterly useless Samaras was ever gonnae get a goal today was if we played it straight to him six yards from the middle of our goal. That’s what the otherwise birlliant Papac did just after our opener. They equalised but the tone had already been established. In Old Firm games the first goal always sets the tone. We scored at Parkhead last season - two equalisers and another which put us back in the lead - but we never scored the first of the game and we never won either of those games. Today we had and we did. I expected Strachan to change it at half-time. He didn’t. So we tore them a new one.

The possession football was ridiculously good. We were sublime, dazzling - frightening almost. Papac and Broadfoot were very nearly hitting the Celtic goal-line - big Bougherra wondered up occassionaly: Steve Davis is accuracy and pace personified. A short spell of inter-passing around their area ended with Daniel skipping round their defence on the edge of the box, beating two men as he tried to find the angle for a shot - he was barged off the ball. Where Celtic would have been claiming for a penalty and an inquiry by the International Court of Human Rights, we just got on with it: Kevin Thomson floated a pearler of a ball from inside left to inside right and Kenny Miller turned his transfer on its head with an expert first-time finish down and across Boruc and into the far side of the net.

Cue explosion.

Know how I was saying Strachan usually loses the first derby of the season but his team then wins the league? Well, the one time he didnae was when Kenny Miller scored the winner in an Old Firm derby at Parkhead - when that happens, Kenny Miller’s team wins the league! And Kenny Miller’s team is RANGERS!

Didn’t spot anyone in the south corner of the Lisbon Lions stand turning their back on him when Kenny and the rest of the players went fucking ballistic towards us after that wee goal!

Then the best. Then the confirmation that this wasn’t just a win but a football castration: We took the ball into Celtic’s half and we just kept it. And it wasn’t as if the hooped horrors were sitting back nursing their wounds and surrendering already - there was barely an hour played and we were only one goal in front, against a team who haven’t lost a league game at home since - well, since the last time we beat them there: This wasn’t laid-back, defensive, slow-stroking-of-the-ball-backwards possession: We were hitting short passes at breakneck speed to players moving even faster. The shapes we were forming, the runs we were making the balls we were clipping, dinking, looping and scooping in and around our proud Champions League Last-16er opponents were breathtaking. The work of Kirk Broadfoot - a player who gets better with every game - was particularly noteable. A young man branded a clogger by so many fuckwits in the stands was showing a deftness of touch and a craft of vision that makes me no longer sympathise with the fact he cannae play at centre-half, his natural position: Next game, we should play him centre-mid!!

But it all ended with our centre-mid extrordinaire. All the possession play worked yet another corner - our 201st to Celtic’s two. I worried that our moment had passed: No. The sign of all good teams - adaptability to the situation: After a period of two- and three-yard one-twos and diamonds, the corner went thirty yards out to Pedro endes and he hit it, first time, twenty fivey yards straight back into the bottom left corner of the net. Game over - worries about my own mortality forgotten, headrush of blood savoured reather than feared, Pedro off down to the Bears, his team-mates off to join him, a gutteral roar of an army who’ve just disembowled the opposition’s general, and me potentially off to the hospital (lucky I carry that portable defribulator with me at all times) as the desire to see Rangers utterly destroy Celtic on their own patch is realised for only the third or fourth time in my life and teh YEEEEEEAAAAAAGGHHHHSSSSS yawl consumes my whole being. Pedro looks like a native American witchdoctor - I’m sure he medicined me to celebrate as hard as I wanted and stay free of coronaries - and his shot was an arrow to kill any prey.

Like all good dramatsts, Rangers then added the comedy moment to the routine, to break up the mood of self-regarding vindication: Artur Boruc, of course, was the clown who had to get what was coming to him and the huffy big wean must have been half-way towards throwing Big Kirk’s cut-back up the wing when he realised he hudnae actually caught it in the first place. Kenny Miller had a bowl of weetabix, a coffe, a fag and a sift through the Sunday papers before eventually deciding to poke home his second goal. Our fourth. It all goes a bit blank after that - a bit wobbly. But I think Celtic pulled one back and I’m sure Allan McGregor was raging. Course he was - he’s a Bluenose.

The “we deserve better” flags were as notebale by their absence today as the little green “SPL champions” flag Artur Boruc usually carries up the pitch after we hump his team - maybe he was scared he’d drop it today. But I was pleased to see so many Celtic fans displaying their pride in being British, waving their passports in the air, happily flashing the royal crest to demonstrate their loyalty to Queen and Country. I’m not much of a one for politics or patriotism, personally - any kind of nationalism or blinkered party-allegiance gives me the willies - so it was reassuring to see a more xenophilic outlook from another Celtic punter, waving a flag of both the Kaunas and Zenit St Petersburg football teams: He was obviously keen to remind his Rangers friends that, as down as they may be about exiting the Champions League qualifiers this season, they’d still reached the last UEFA Cup final and lost fairly narrowly to one of the richest and best sides in Europe. Today was, I felt, a celebration of socialist, working class, fiitbaw-loving Scottishness.

Ahh, the banter.

Oh - yeah - there were red cards. Big Cousin’s was technically correct but well worth it as yer smelly centre-halves have no problem steaming into us with elbows and what nought so, like men, they have to take it back. Jan Venegoor of Castlemilk’s was just hilarious - I think he went for about five different red card offences on Big Kirk in the wan move. None of which was of any serious consequence to Kirk’s pysical well-being but all of which was, again, a technical sending-off. Honours even on that score, at least and, for once, the humping of Celtic so unequivical and the referee’s performance so generally stable that there’s no way they can change the subject. Celtic came at us and played a bit of football themselves. It was an open game and they played their part but - really - I think in future, for their own good, they should try to be a bit more ANTI-FOOTBALL: If they want to be a truly great team, like.

Tee-heh. Ahhhhh. Mmmm.

This, ye see, is the problem with the “Old Firm” thing. Ye have a pop back at one Celtic fan whose been a knob towards ye, then ye end up insulting all the ones who’ve been decent towards ye. In the heat of thw moment, when someone calls you a hun or an orange bastard, it’s very hard to slow it down, think how little that actually means, that it’s actually a backwards complimet and smile back. Same applies when we’re calling Celtic fans and players fenian bastards or whatever. It’s pish because it’s pish: There are so many inter-marriages in Scotland and, like any culture, the moment the catholic masses arrived here from Ireland in the 1800s, Protestants and Catholics started fancying each other, marrying each other, fucking each other and generally getting so confused and mixed up with each other in the way that human nature has demanded since the first homo sapiens walked the earth that there HAS to be nutcase fundamentalists trying to pretend we’re all different. It’s simple psychology - we all have issues in our lives and we need to let off steam: Pile it all onto the football and we can do it over 90 minutes. We all have great stuff in life and we want to celebrate: Pile it into 90 minutes and we’ll call it the football. The hate, like the love, is simple transference. Look it up.

If you’re truly religious you want no place at a Rangers-Celtic game. If you’re truly religious about football though, you have a friend in me.

Sometimes your team wins, sometimes they draw, sometimes they lose. Mostly, all you can do is make sure ye stick with them in the dark days and savour them as much as the good days. My team were fantastic today. My team are The Rangers FC of Glasgow, Scotland. If anyone ever asks you, “who’s that team they call The Rangers? Who’s that team they all adore?”, just give them the TV recording of today’s game and they’ll get more than an inkling. If anyone ever asks you, “But why do they say They Are The People? What are Rangers supporters actually LIKE?”, I hope you can point to this blog and the brilliant people who’ve brought it to life - my cyber friends … my friends of all persuasions - and made it the greatest experience of my writing life. I hope this blog floats in cyber space for infinity and I hope passers-by can dip into it and refuel on the love, passion and Tennents lager which fills it.

That passion was all about Rangers. The love was always there and will always remain. The lager is what I’ll be seeing a lot more of after Rangers games for the next year or so.

I dedictae this blog to all Rangers fans, everywhere - to all football lovers everywhere. They know what I meant. And whenever the football lets you down or - more likely - when the media or fellow fans do yer nut in, remember that help and comfort is only a phonecall away:

Please. Do this for me. If yer a Rangers fan and - say, for example - you’ve just heard that other Rangers fans who rightly go out their way to organise a celebration of the life of a legendary player from the thirties who died forty years ago somehow also want to villify a legendary Gers captain from the eighties and early nineties who hepled turn the club around simply becuse he’s still alive and therefore, ye know, says stuff … or if yer a Gretna fan who wants to know when the glory days will return … or, if yer an Aberdeen fan who wants to know why his team have, for the last twenty years, played only two games a season … or if yer a Nuremberg fan who wants to remind everyone that “der Klub”, YOUR Club, is STILL the second most succesful in the history of German championships after Bayern Munich even if we are in the Second division this season and that Gerd Muller was actually a Nuremberg supporter as a boy … or, if yer a Celtic fan … at all … then call this number - UK (0141) 334 8848 - and ask for a number 32, with salad and chili sauce and a can of Coke tae wash it doon.

Goodnight, troops - I’ll see ye on the threads.

I remember those cheers.
They still ring in my ears
And for years they’ll remain in my thoughts.

Coz one day we played Celtic and - what’d they do? - they pissed in their shorts!

I’ve recalled every goal, every shot, every pass
- the best way a guy can get a fat ass -
As you know, I’ve my own special “mass”.

Though I’d rather hear you cheer,
when I delve into Shakespeare
- A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdom for a Horse; I haven’t had a winner in six months …

I’m no Hugh McIlvanney,
but if he wasn’t “that way” he would say
That the thing is to sing as they play.

So thanks for the stage, where my bullshit has raged,
and although I can’t write I have loved to recite …
“THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!”.

That’s entertainment.

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Published:
08.31.08 / 9pm
Category:
News