Rangers FC lodge papers to go into administration

EUROPEAN EXAMINER END OF WEEK COMMENT:

"Goodbye, goodbye, you were the Billy Boys"!

So let me get this right, with Rangers in administration and in total and utter disarray, we now have the likes of First Minister Alex Salmond and Glasgow University Professor, who is involved in Catholic teacher training, Robert Davis, referring respectively to Rangers as "part of the fabric of the Scottish nation" and a "cultural focus".

My question to those from politics to academia to beyond; please do tell what history, tradition, culture we are talking about? Please do explain the detail of this "fabric" and "cultural focus"?

Let me give an anecdote for insight for anyone coming late to the thing which we know as Glasgow Rangers. Growing up in the 1980s it was natural to play football with other boys and girls on the street, in which there were more Aberdeen and Dundee United tops than Rangers, due to the two former, the New Firm, being European powers and the latter being mediocre. However, on meeting up one night one of the Dundee United supporting boys turned around to my brother and myself and told us he was not playing with “a Fenian”. It not being the usual language of a New Firm fan, it was obvious something had happened? Ah yes, he had just attended his first Rangers match under the leadership of Graeme Souness!

So let me ask again, what is this tradition, culture, history, we are talking about? Again, please do explain the detail of this "fabric" and "cultural focus"?

No more than 8-years-old, returning from visiting relatives in Glasgow and cramped into a two-hour train journey, packed with post-match Rangers fans who were reminiscing about the recent away European match in Dublin. The talk was not about the game but about attacking Dubliners, invading homes and ripping down Rosary Beads from walls, etc, etc, etc. One part of the two-hour-hate-spew, which has never in 30 years left me, was the scholarly argument over Terry Wogan and Gloria Hunniford. In essence, Mr Wogan was “a f***ing Fenian”, while “f***ing Fenian Hunniford” was a case of mistaken identity as she was really Glorious Gloria, a good Protestant – or at very least “no a f***ing Fenian”!

Those same grown men should not have been talking like that, full stop. Those same grown men should not have been talking like that in front of strangers, full stop. Those same grown men should not have been talking like that in front of a mother and her two small children, full stop.

And as we left the train that night, with half of the same group disembarking at the same stop, it is only now you realize they knew who we were and what they were doing. They knew we were part of the local five per cent Catholic population. But to bully and intimidate and dominate is part of their DNA. They might as well have said that for every fiver we spent on train fares they would spend ten!!

So, let’s try again, exactly what is this history, tradition, culture we are talking about? And again, please do explain the detail of this "fabric" and "cultural focus"?

But of course that is all in the pre-Mo Johnstone-ok-now-lets-sign-Catholics-not-because-bigotry-is-wrong-but-because-we-need-to-to-win-trophies days?

March 2011, as now a proud father with small children who are starting to wake up to the beauties of football. Flicking on the television excitedly to watch the Scottish League Cup Final, a Glasgow derby between Celtic and Rangers, we had all been reassured by the SNP Government that the authorities were now prepared to clamp down on “sectarianism” – aka. anti-Catholicism.

However, it was, to put it simply, a 120 minutes of reality hate-TV, in which the majority of the 25,000 Rangers fans - not this mystical minority which I oft hear - were forced to sing songs aimed at my small children for having the temerity to be “a Fenian”!!!

And for the record, unless one was seriously opposed to gay dance culture, the iconic Depeche Mode anthem “I Just Can’t Get Enough” being belted out by the Celtic support would, in all honesty, struggle to get into any songs-that-are-banned list….

To add insult to injury, we then had the leading SNP Governmental Minister, laughably the then Justice Secretary, thanking the fans by saying: “This was the showpiece final everyone wanted to see, and a great advert for Scottish football…(the) fans contributed to a memorable occasion”.

So let’s try one more time – what is it exactly we are talking about when people refer to Rangers’ history, tradition, culture? For the final time, please do explain the detail of this "fabric" and "cultural focus"?

Salmond himself, although now backtracking, even tried to claim it would be bad for Celtic and Scottish football. Alec my good fellow, you have just spent the most part of 2011 telling me that football and politics don’t mix! Why are you speaking on this?

Also, you have spent a large part of 2011 playing down the importance of football. Well, guess what Alec, I agree with you, for there are far more important things than football. For the sake of Scottish society it will be a great thing if Rangers descend into the abyss. I never ever want my children coming home and asking me tearfully, “Daddy, what’s a Fenian”?

With lack of public honesty, and with life being short, I have to be honest and starkly state that Rangers on their bigoted deathbed is good for Scottish society. And more specifically, good for the 16 per cent Catholic minority, a community which still lives with a legacy of vulnerability.

Why does Rangers matter so much on a sociological level? It is simple logic. The better Rangers are, the more people are attracted to watch them, the more they bring their children, and the more anti-Catholicism and anti-Irish Catholicism is normalized, encouraged and spread.

Let us not kid ourselves, Rangers’ history, tradition, culture has been a lightening rod, a generator and catalyst for hate towards an immigrant people. A disposed people. A people, at best, ignored. A people, at worst, despised..

But on the more trivial point, Scottish football will do well without Rangers. It is the Souness revolution, 1986 onwards, which destroyed Scottish football. It perverted the market to the point where Aberdeen, Dundee United – a club that is still 4-0 up against the mighty Barcelona when it comes to European competitive matches – and Hearts became what they are today. With their lavish spending, Rangers did not just steal the best players from these teams but also their support-base.

With the demise of Rangers, maybe these fans, and certainly their children, will return to the Pittodries, the Tannadices, the Tynecastles. Then there will be proper competition. And I for one will be pleased to simply curse other teams for beating Celtic on purely football grounds. But I’ll be pleased at a later date to remember, with fond memories, great non-Celtic teams, as I do with Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen and Jim McLean’s Dundee United.

What I’ll never do is reminisce about Rangers, a club which made my life growing up in Scotland, as an Irish-Scottish Catholic, that bit harder.

I am prepared to forgive Rangers for this scar on Scottish society – but only once an official apology is offered to the Catholic community in Scotland.

But what I am not prepared to do is foolishly forget the hatred – and I most certainly am not prepared to foolishly pay for the privilege of being hated with my taxes.

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

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