Forgotten Bluenoses ....
I entered his street and immediately I knew which house was his…without looking at the numbers. His garden was his number…his identity.

Red, blue and white flowers carefully pruned, giving a show of a bygone age…perhaps gone but obviously not forgotten. The vibrant colours of blue, red and white told their own story. Carefully nurtured and carefully tended…and they told me so much about the man I had come to see. The basics had not only been done well…..they had been strictly and faithfully observed…followed to the letter….resulting in a show of pure magnificence.

Before I even chapped his door he was there inviting me in. And as we walked through his hallway I felt I was in a time warp…framed portraits dawned the wall…triggering my memory to remember players both my father and grandfather had spoken of. But furthermore there were pictures of players and managers I had never even heard of.

As we entered his living room I caught a glimpse of our former monarch gazing down at me and immediately recognised it as Annigoni’s portrait from the 1950’s of Queen Elizabeth the Second. And around the room I was taken back through time…some from my early years…but some even from before even my grandfather’s time. For there above the fireplace hung a picture of William of Orange on his white horse…victoriously crossing the Boyne.

At this point I knew my paper’s researchers had done their job well. This Ranger’s supporter was most certainly one who we would refer to as “old school”…and that was exactly what my remit was. To interview one of the “forgotten ones”.
As I spoke with this old gent it was hard to believe that anyone could ever have taken issue with him….or the things he honoured and defended could ever be seen as offensive. His manner was assured…and his voice steady….you knew the moment you spoke to him that nothing but truth emanated from his lips.

“So how did it start I asked him…what was the catalyst ?”   He thought long and hard before he spoke.
“Well it wasn’t just one thing” he said. “More a combination of factors”.
I asked him to elaborate.

“At the time there was fairly vitriolic campaign against Rangers by certain sections of the media…no matter what Rangers fans did it would be reported in a negative fashion”
“Such as ?” I asked.

“Well when I was younger I attended a European match and we had a huge card display before the game…one of the biggest ever…with Saltires and Union Flags…it looked magnificent, but afterwards all the press would say was that Ibrox looked like a Nuremberg Rally”

How ironic I thought. In a country where immigrants received classes in “Being British” that home grown British citizens showing their loyalty to flag and crown could be compared to Nazis.

“And it went on… he continued…bit by bit they kept chipping away…and the more they chipped the more defiant we became. We loved our club and refused to let it be tarnished by the negative press and their lies. We were fighting for more than a football club…we were fighting for a set of beliefs….a way of life”

As I listened to the old gent speak my memory was taken back and I remembered conversations with my grandparents about “the old Rangers”. To a time where supporting the club was not orchestrated like a directed play…tedious and predictable, lacking feeling and passion but was instead spontaneous…imaginative…colourful and not forced. To a time when banners and songs said so much about the people who sung them and what they believed in. When to be a Ranger truly reflected the person you were.

“And then of course there was the anti-sectarian initiative”. …he continued. I listened in awe as the old gent recounted the impact of Holyrood’s legislative impact. I almost had to pinch myself to ensure I was hearing correctly. My sense of disbelief was due to the revelations years afterwards regarding the same Labour Party who had been the architects of this legislation. How could it be the same party whose “west coast mafia” was commonly spoken of in journalistic circles….whose own sectarian scandals exposed in places like Monklands…could have the gall to drive through such legislation. ?

“It was another time…another place” the old gent retorted. “Spin doctors and a favourable press ensured a smooth passage”
Ah “spin doctors”….it had been years since I had heard anyone use that term….its use nowadays in politics was political suicide…for since this old gents day the spin doctors had been exposed for what they were ….professional liars who dressed up bad news or even worse… twisted and distorted the truth and misled the public.

“And what of those inside Ibrox….those with the power…what did they do to defend the club ?” I enquired.


He looked at me ruefully and thought long and hard before answering. “They say time is a great healer but I find it hard to forgive them. They were warned time and time again about the consequences of their failure to respond to the lies…to the accusations against the club. But they did not listen and they did not defend the club. Instead they pursued an agenda of appeasing the press and their lies…the only time they responded was when they themselves were criticised.”

“And what affect did that have ?” I asked .

For the first time during our interview I saw emotion in the old gents eyes…not just sadness but a deep sense of pain. “In the end we came to realise that the club…the institution…the way of life we were fighting for bore no semblance to that which masqueraded as Rangers Football Club. They continued to appease the press and politicians to the point that they drove and banned their very own supporters from Ibrox itself”

Had it not been for my previous research it would have been difficult to believe what the old gent was saying, but I knew it to be true. The difficult bit was trying to understand it. Hindsight only made it more difficult to understand exactly what the “guardians” of Rangers were trying to achieve.

For they had at their disposal this priceless gem…this body of people who lived for the Rangers…whose lives embodied everything which this club stood for…who were wonderful ambassadors for this once great club…and not only did the fail to hold onto this priceless gem…they actively threw it away. Unforgivable.

And of course the rest as they say is history. Rangers became a club without a soul…without traditions and lacking in heritage no longer an institution or a way of life. Ibrox…when fans bothered to attend…was like a morgue…devoid of spontaneous atmosphere…and the only singing was when the “customers” bothered to respond to the screen prompts pleading with them to sing.

And in that moment I knew the title to my forthcoming article...
It’s a true saying…. sometimes you only truly appreciate something when it is gone.

                                                                                                                                  RANGERS FOREVER

source of article unknown

The Gallant Pioneers - Rangers Founders Trail

NAZI FLAG
Some mis-informed folk try to make an issue of the time a Nazi flag flew at Ibrox Park ....... well here's the story.

Nothing tae hide, nae hidden agendas, it was a Scotland Select fitba match

The last time a united Germany faced Scotland at Ibrox, was on Wednesday, Oct.14, 1936.
The countries had only met once before, in 1929, when a makeshift all tartan Scotland team had drawn 1-1 in Berlin.

A crowd of 40,000 was much smaller than expected due to the political feeling about the game - even in 1936 there were strong misgivings about the Nazi regime, combined with bitter memories of the Great War. To make their politics entirely clear, the Germans had brought with them two large Nazi flags - red with a black swastika on a white circle - and these flew over the Ibrox stand together with a Union Jack.

As the game approached, the political overtones were rife. There was an atmosphere of having an unwanted guest to stay; no-one wanted to be rude and everyone ended up being overbearingly polite instead.
Mind you, Rangers and Scotland goalkeeper Jerry Dawson tried to make light of the situation: he dabbed a small black moustache on his upper lip and pulled his hair over his right eyebrow.

Scotland's second half performance was enough to secure a 2-0 win with strikes from Celtic's Jimmy Delaney (67 and 83 mins), his first international goals. The Germans left the pitch with another Nazi salute to the crowd, and went on to Dublin where they lost 5-2.

They can little have thought that it would be almost 60 years before a united German team again met Scotland in Glasgow.
They would hardly recognise Ibrox, either, although the Union Jacks are still there.

                                         Okay that's put that tae bed.

THE REAL HUNS (An interesting wee article by David Leggat the chief sports writer of the Herald)

“There is a marvelous part of Paul Brickhill's wonderful biography of Sir Douglas Bader, 'Reach For The Sky,' which recalls when the Battle of Britain fighter pilot hero is being questioned by a German officer.

It is just after Bader became a POW, and the German adopts a softy-softy approach, saying to Bader that he knows the British always call them, Jerries. Bader, always pugnacious, quickly interjects and corrects his interrogator by saying: "No we don't. We call you Huns."

Which gives a perfect example of just who or what Huns historically are. There is a long history behind this term, and those who bandy it about as a jibe at Rangers and their supporters are clearly ignorant of that history. In the ranks of the ignorant I include the editor of the Scotsman, John McLennan . His newspaper was deluged by complaints after a cartoon appeared featuring the German Pope waving to Rangers fans in the aftermath of the draw at Old Trafford, and remarking that it was a good day all round for Huns.
McLennan was so under siege he took a step unusual for an editor-in-chief of publishing a signed apology. It was however, weasel-worded, as he admitted to being a Rangers fan, brought up in the West of Scotland who was frequently referred to as a Hun by his Celtic supporting friends, and insisted he took no offence from it.

WELL HE SHOULD!

And indeed he would if he knew the history of the word in the 20th century. What will surprise all but the most erudite of readers, is that it was first used in July 1900 by Kaiser Wilhelm 111 as he spoke to German troops being sent to China to put down the Boxer Rebellion.
What Kaiser Bill said was this: "Prisoners will not be taken. Once, a thousand years ago the Huns, under their king, Attila, made a name for themselves, one still potent in legend and tradition. May you in this way make the name of Germany remembered for a thousand years, so that no Chinaman will ever again dare to even squint at a German."
There followed a period of German barbarism when the Germans, taking the Kaiser at his word, perpetrated the first genocide of the 20th century, as a forerunner to the Holocaust.

It was during 1904 in German south west Africa - what we know today as Nambia - that General Lothar von Trotha slaughtered 60,000 of the Herero tribe and 8,000, from a population of 10,000, of the Nama tribe. This led to the Germans becoming widely known as Huns, an epithet which gained even more of a common currency ten years later at the outbreak of the Great War.

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany perfected the barbaric techniques of mass extermination, putting six million Jews to death, plus uncounted millions of Romany people, Slavs, and even their own countrymen, should they be unfortunate enough to suffer any mental illness, or be homosexual.
Huns, in the tradition of Attila, indeed, but to an extent the Mongolian warlord could never have imagined.

It was a word still used into the mid 1970s when that fine and learned Scot, Jeremy Issacs, produced the definitive television history of the 1939-45 fight for the survival of civilisation against the Huns, The World At War. Many of those interviewed, in a series which is often re-run on the History , Yesterday or Discovery channels, refer to those from Nazi Germany as Huns, just as Bader did when confronted with one.

Therefore those who use it to describe Rangers and the club's supporters are either extremely ignorant, or believe the Ibrox club and its supporters can be compared to the SS, the Gestapo and all the others who were responsible for genocide. Brian Reade of the Daily Mirror is another who is either a fool or a bigot after he tried to be a smart alec by using it, referring to Rangers , in a recent column in that once great but now laughable rag.

One man who would not tolerate it being used was the wee guy who I thought was one of the best things ever to happen to Scottish football, the fellow who rescued Celtic from oblivion, the wonderful Fergus McCann. I always thought Celtic as a club were at their best and most admirable when McCann was calling the shots and a good pal of mine, Jim Cullen, a Celtic supporter who owned The Montrose Bar, where I often shared a shandy with Billy McNeill and other Parkhead legends, idolised wee Fergus.

Of course there may be many with Celtic DNA who disagree. Who think McCann was not as great a Celt as I and my pal big Jim believed. However, I am sure there are others, like so many of the Celtic supporters who have been my friends down through the years, and who may not have been completely aware of just what the history of the epithet, Huns is.

They know now!

Though I am just as sure there are others who won't take a blind bit of notice of this wee lesson to let them know the history, and will continue to apply the the insult, Huns to Rangers and the club's fans.

Fergus McCann had his own insult for those people. He called them bigots.”