Despite who was producing it or what agenda they might have sought to promote, watching STV’s ‘The Football Years’ never fails to induce a satisfyingly warm wave of nostalgia. Two episodes of this series inspired hour-long phone calls to my old man as we reminisced about the minutia of games of yore. Looking further ahead in the schedule we were certain there was one episode we would not miss and this led to a debate about our own personal Favourite Year.
Rangers have never been as technically beautiful as they were in 1999/00. Anyone who says otherwise is sadly mistaken. I used to approach a trip to Pittodrie with trepidation. Pfft, 5-1. Tannadice? Tynecastle? Have four apiece. Four past the Yahoos. Twice. It should have been another treble but so what. The football was breathtaking, the midfield was perfect. A horrible draw kept us from progressing in the Champions League. A bad enough draw nearly stopped us getting there in the first place.
We competed on a level playing field with Bayern and were only outclassed that season by Valencia, finalists that season and the next again where they were defeated by the same Munich side who were robbed by United and were relieved to see the back of us. But as satisfying as that football was, that season still plays with others for second place in my affections.
We take football very seriously in this part of the world. It can be an all-encompassing obsession but never more so than when you were a child. From the age of 6-12 you simply have no perspective on life. For me, and countless others, football and Rangers FC was number one. Every detail was poured over and relived with your friends. There was no responsibility, no job, and no studies. Women are not yet important, or popular music, nor alcohol. You have no kids to place a sporting pastime into some degree of rational context. So for a boy born in 1980, whose first game was in 1986 where he saw this man called Souness drive Rangers onto beat Ferguson’s Aberdeen, those formative years were very pleasant indeed.
After years of promise, the summer of 1992 brought the one material possession I sought more than anything else in the world. What looked at first glance like a silver book of raffle tickets was actually a cast-iron guarantee that I would be going to Ibrox every time the Rangers played there. And, if I behaved and also noted the voucher number in the Rangers News, further afield too. It happened very fast. He phoned home one day during the summer holidays to say he had called the ticket office and by chance they had two together. If he went over and paid by cash would he get them? He was assured so. That afternoon was the longest I had known but was made worthwhile when he arrived home. I was never to know then of course but those ten seasons of having a Season book would establish a special bond with my Dad that very few other things possibly could manage.
Ironically enough it started with a friendly against Marseille to welcome home Trevor Steven. We were torn apart that night but that didn’t detract one iota from the excitement I felt as I ripped off my first voucher and handed it over. Yes, even the pre-season matches were covered in those days. The seat was perfect. Govan Rear (Premier Club), half way up the stand and just ever so slightly to the left of the half way line. A great group of guys around about us with great patter every week. Wee Bud sat in front with his pal Archie. They were always late.
Behind was Martin, a “lawyer with such a foul mouth” according to his mother whom he sat beside. Beside them was the great Kai Johansen, of all people. To my right a gigantic, and if we are to be perfectly frank, smelly man who was so large he couldn’t stand up for goals and had to rely on the goal-scoring details being relayed to him by his son. To my father’s left, a nice couple with an even nicer daughter who, being in her late teens at the time, was a cause of acute shyness for an already withdrawn 11-year old. It’s funny to think that these complete strangers, with whom you have absolutely no history, would hug and kiss you like a brother. Following football does that and following Rangers in 1992/93 did that often.
It’s easy to forget now but we started that season quite slowly and even lost in a remarkable 4-3 game up at Dens Park (our last for quite some time of course) and then followed a very anaemic display in the first Old Firm game at Ibrox. A draw was salvaged through a brilliant Ian Durrant strike but even that didn’t spark us into life as we found ourselves 1-0 down to Aberdeen at half time the following week. Rangers were dire in that first 45 minutes. Utterly atrocious but what followed after that famous dressing room spat was a breathtaking performance which swept the Sheep aside by 3 goals to 1. That was it. That was the catalyst for the rest of the season.
No-one could imagine what would happen after that but even I knew that was special. I raved about it for the rest of the week. Goals rained in after that, mostly for McCoist but there were enough for others too. Most notable was a 4-0 win at Tannadice. It was my first visit there and in fact my first visit to any other ground outside of Glasgow. This was really what following Rangers was all about. The atmosphere was different, the reaction more hostile, the songs far more varied. I soaked it all up and felt this intangible sense of belonging.
Near the end of October we embarked on five games in seventeen days which would define the season. It was hyped up everywhere and big questions were being asked about how good this side actually was. First up was the visit of Leeds United to Ibrox. I knew it could be loud at football matches, my first home Old Firm game left me in no doubt, but that night took the roof off. What I didn’t know is how quiet forty odd thousand Rangers fans could be! After that dreadful start we were allowed back into the game and eventually of course won it. Even though we had beaten the Champions of England the drive home was not a happy one.
Hateley had missed a great chance to make it 3-1 in the second half which would have given us some comfort in a tricky return leg. On the Sunday was the League Cup Final against Aberdeen. Not surprisingly we weren’t as bright as we could have been but went ahead from a Stuart McCall goal which was not too dissimilar to Steven Davis’ opener on Sunday. The Sheep were let back in and equalised through a clever strike from Duncan Shearer and it went into extra time. That we needed a headed own goal to win the cup probably tells its own story but I was reminded that day that Rangers will do enough to win trophies. I was also reminded how much of a pussy I was when it came to watching big games. The amount of times I ran to the toilets or walked on the concourse at the back of the West Stand was ridiculous: Anything to run down the clock.
It was my first League Cup Final but I had watched those excellent Rangers – Aberdeen Skol Cup Finals of the late 80’s on TV. Half mesmerised by the action, half tortured with nerves. Sandwiched in between these five games was a routine league win at home to Motherwell but it was notable for what I believed was the goal of the season. McCoist finished it, obviously, but the passing move must have gone through seven or eight different players. The edginess of the first two matches had gone and we were back in that flow. Wednesday 4th November crawled on at the pace of an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping, to borrow from Blackadder which at the time I did quite often. Double French last thing could go take a **** to itself. All any of us were thinking about was Elland Road and the now titled Battle of Britain 2nd Leg.
Not many gave us a prayer, especially in the national media and to be honest as kick off drew near I was still bemoaning that Hateley miss. As usual my heart was in my mouth as I watched with my parents in the living room. The man himself controls from a Goram punt and then..... BANG! Away goal cancelled, cushion restored, easy street no? For most of you I’m sure but as the match wore on I couldn’t handle the nerves and bolted up the stairs to watch Liverpool play Sparta Prague in the Cup Winners Cup, sound off to hear of any developments from below. I wanted to see Souness and Liverpool turfed out (let’s call it a brief huff before my love was restored again years later) and when Prague scored their decisive goal I rushed down to share the news.
As I opened the living room door Hateley had picked the ball up on the left wing and delivered the most perfectly weighted ball for McCoist. Relief. I could watch the rest in full confidence, even when Cantona squeezed one back. This team of mine were special. I knew it, my old man knew it, my Rangers supporting mates knew it and most importantly every Yahoo I knew was reminded at every opportunity; which was nice, and proved rather timely, as on the Saturday I made my first Old Firm trip to Parkhead.
It was also my first trip on a supporters’ bus. A friend and colleague of my Dad’s was in the Toryglen True Blues and, to save hassle with parking, we hopped on with them. It is only writing this, especially in relation to the obsession with the season ticket, that I realise how materialistic it may come across but it is an important reflection of the times, or at least my memory of them. We were by no means rich but were what sociologists would call a young, ‘upwardly mobile’ family and this seemed to chime perfectly with Rangers at the time.
On the road to Parkhead that day we were getting some abuse from a passing shit-heap of a car with Celtic fans charmingly mooning us. The boy at the front of the bus pulled a few £20 notes from his back pocket and waved them back. I can still see the embarrassment on the faces in the car. They had nothing to match that. And there and then, without a hint of poetic license, the relationship of the time was captured in my mind. Not only was Rangers FC considerably richer than you, so were our fans.
The first thing that struck me about the stadium was the poverty. Having grown up watching football in a modern venue, the ‘Piggery’ was from another time - with the rivers of piss running down the back of the terrace. We won, courtesy of a clever move finished by Durrant, and the superiority was further established on the way home. “Heraghty’s, driver!” was the cry from the back of the bus. Not being familiar with the Southside at all, never mind the local hostelries, I had no idea where we were when the bus stopped outside a pub full of sad faces with green and white scarves. The windows of the right hand side of the bus were thumped along to “Sure it is old but...” The desired reaction was quickly derived and the bus pulled away in hysterical laughter and cheering, and no-one louder than me who was beginning to realise what this rivalry was all about.
“It was an exciting game, I’ll give you that” said my friend Craig, who occupied a unique position in the West of Scotland by being a genuine Dundee United fan. “But the music they used was shite!” His appreciation of Handel may have been down to an under-developed ear but he was right about the game and this shiny new Champions League. The tickets were different, the programmes, the advertising boards, the big game of parachute those kids were playing in the centre circle. Marseille came back to Ibrox for a real game but under less balmy conditions than that night in August. The pattern of the game never changed a beat.
For 75 minutes they played us off the park with a pace and skill I had only witnessed in the flesh once when Dynamo Kiev came to Ibrox for a friendly. This was for real and we all feared the worst for this six-match package as Rudi Voller tapped in to make it 2-0. Looking back on that scandal the one question we have to ask is why? Like Nixon and Watergate, they had no need to tamper with anything in the first place. With Voller, Boksic, Pele, Dechamps, Desailly, Barthez, Boli & Sauzee, they were a class apart from most sides in Europe. And most ertainly us. Until Gary McSwegan, soon to be forgotten as quickly as he arrived, directed a header from miles away over Barthez, we were also-rans. After that, we looked as if we could take them to the cleaners and back. Hateley’s normal range header gave us a point but the feeling after was that we could live with these sides. We could win this thing. Ian Ferguson’s deflected strike in Bochum against CSKA Moscow (who don’t forget had eliminated the holders Barcelona in the qualifiers) set us up nicely going into Christmas.
Part II
League wins were now becoming guaranteed as we brought in the festive period. Seeing Rangers win an Ibrox Old Firm game at New Year with a Trevor Steven header reminiscent of his title winning number at Tannadice a few years previously, never becomes routine (certainly not as I would have to wait four seasons to see it again) but even then I knew this Celtic side were dross. No, it was a re-arranged fixture, moved from my birthday in December to early February, which was the real league highlight of my favourite year. Walking up to Pittodrie that freezing Wednesday night, my old man said “This is bigger than Celtic”. He was right. Although this was to be the last real threat the Dons posed us, this rivalry had characterised the past five years and getting the better of them usually meant the difference between winning trophies and not.
Even by early February this game was crucial. Win it and the gap would be realistically too big. Lose and it was very much ‘game on’. It was a performance that typified the way Smith would set out in crucial league games in his tenure. We were absolutely battered and Goram put in a performance that justified removing him from the transfer list after his scare the previous summer. Aberdeen and Jess in particular were all over us. Usually I would be shaking in my seat but what I had witnessed that season so far gave me hope that we could hit back. Yet again it came from that man Hateley. Bedlam in the Rangers end, pelted with coins from that moment on from the Sheep beside us. We nearly didn’t hang on. A shot in the last minute that broke through the mass of Rangers defenders and our heroic goalie; the Aberdeen fans to my left jumped up to obscure my view, the players I could see had their hands in the air, the main stand too. My heart fell. So fortunately did Goram’s arse and stopped the ball from passing over the line. Cue more coins at the final whistle. This was another eye-opener for an idealistic kid from the suburbs. Seeing Rangers fans get dragged out in minivans was a shock to the system but I was assured that it was the norm up here when we visited. We left battered and bruised, both ‘literally Ruud’ and metaphorically, but we left with the points and the league all but tied up.
There was a promotion afoot in the springtime for my old man so I was promised at least one European trip. My excitement as we boarded the plane to Belgium was beyond any reasonable level. The stewardesses didn’t stand a chance as they went through their standard drill despite being drowned out by ‘Follow Follow’ and the ‘Billy Boys’. Bruges was ****ing freezing. I quickly bought a Rangers woollen hat from the cockney street vendor (obviously) which I believe saved my life as the day turned into night. I couldn’t grasp the numbers that had travelled.
Now it was nowhere near Manchester levels or even the Munich and Barcelona trips that I would go on later but we still took over this quaint, ancient city. The ground was a shithole that made Parkhead look like the San Siro and we were fenced out prior to kick-off. The fence didn’t last long as I recall as I stood and watched it be pushed down. I was standing next to a man whom I was told was a Rangers legend that wouldn’t put up with this treatment in his prime. The name Bobby Shearer meant nothing then but I took my Dad’s word for it. The clichéd ‘game of two halves’ doesn’t do this match justice. Once again we were dreadful from the off and deserved to be one down at the break. The second half, with nothing for Walter to lose, was as good as a performance I would see from Rangers away in Europe until we made the trip to Leverkusen six years later.
We got the point but it should have been more and we assumed Marseille would have done their job (it wasn’t until we were back on the bus we found out that they had been equally frustrated that evening). As we streamed out of the ground a fan in front proclaimed with great confidence that “the Frogs won’t take anything from this shithole. The Belgians hate the French you know.” I believed it 100%. Why would I not? Everything was going our way that season. I got home at 3am but still bounced up for school the next morning as I couldn’t wait to share my stories about this adventure I had been on. How I was allowed the day off from my mother let alone the school I’ll never know.
It was on a midweek trip back from Perth soon after, a scrappy 1-1 draw, that we heard news on the radio that sounded as serious as the country going to war. At the top of the sports report on BBC Radio Scotland was the news that “AC Milan has lost a game of football.” Capello’s side had finally been caught on their long unbeaten run. It was the first club outside of Rangers that seemed in any way attractive and glamorous when they were winning the European Cup in the late 80’s but now they were starting to be a real focus for me. They were running away with Group B of the Champions League and would almost certainly take their place in the final in Munich.
My hope was growing into belief and after Scott Nisbet’s fluke against Bruges at Ibrox, it was now a certainty. “Our name is on the Cup son” my father remarked after that. I liked the sound of that a lot. I had heard about ’67. I wanted that to be wiped out for good. There was one small, tiny nagging doubt that night though. Could we win in France without Hateley? We had Ally of course, who was beating sides by himself in the league but hadn’t managed a goal in this new tournament yet. But we had goals in midfield and that would have to do wouldn’t it? And even if we could get a draw against Marseille, they wouldn’t beat Bruges. That guy had said. He was an adult and therefore he knew what he was talking about. Nah, we would be in that final.
Soon after the Rossoneri had succumbed, so too would our long unbeaten run come to an end and it couldn’t have been a worse day. I knew my Dad wasn’t happy about being in the London Road end as he had told me about the nutters who loved to go there. We were pretty early on the terrace and I had got near a barrier so I could push myself up to see if need be. He wasn’t wrong about it being mental. Thousands of bears in great spirits, season of our dreams and chants of “there’s no trophies” of which I’m sure 2 Unlimited would have been proud. Way too crowded, perhaps thousands too many.
Soon after kick-off it was starting to get really worrying at how crushed it was getting. The metal barrier was beginning to hurt and, being naturally claustrophobic, I started to panic. The guys around were brilliant and I was carried down to the front. Later we heard that the boys on the turnstiles had taken the early tickets without taking the stubs and had gone out and sold them again. Whatever, there were too many of us in that day and, only four years from Hillsborough, that ground was a death trap. Weeks later my Dad, now becoming even more of a hero than McCoist, made that point on STV’s Sport In Question. After much discussion with the lawyers, it didn’t make it. Even more disappointing was losing the record there. Such a tired performance, we didn’t deserve much more although again Hateley could have levelled it late on. The delight in the Celtic support was curious. It was nothing more than a scratch on our title ambitions but they celebrated as if they had gone top of the table.
It was during this season that a Rangers magazine began doing the rounds in our house. I was only allowed to see it in secret as my mother would never approve of the language, sometimes on the front cover. I loved Follow Follow in those early confident years. The cartoons never missed their target. More and more I would learn of the importance that this football club had in so many people’s lives. At that age I couldn’t grasp it all. I couldn’t understand how one moaning bastard could be so unhappy during this of all times. What I did like was the early desire to put on displays at away games, especially the ‘Piggery’.
Me and my mates would try and copy that in the house and so it was on that beautiful spring evening that we decked out the ‘TV room’ upstairs with every flag we could find to watch the match against Marseille. A trip there had been on the cards but the Boss had put the kybosh on it. Never mind, I’d be going to Munich anyway. This was do-or-die. Unless of course, we got a draw in which case, the next game would be do-or-die! As usual we started nervously and David Robertson, whose distribution had been a constant gripe in our house since his arrival, put us in a great deal of merde. My God: the noise. Even through the TV speakers it rattled me.
We could have easily have gone under like the Russians and Belgians had so easily sunk there previously. How we managed to keep it at one I’ll never know but hopes, although faded, were still alive. Durrant’s goal looked even more beautiful from that camera angle on the 18 yard line that would become so popular after France ’98. A genuine Scottish talent, that could have so easily been snuffed out too soon, was at home on this greatest of stages. They had more chances to follow but we had one, a header late on that fell to McSwegan in the box but alas no repeat of his Ibrox heroics. Big Hateley would have scored that. He would have burst the ****ing net. But we were still level and hey; they wouldn’t beat Bruges so all we had to do was beat Moscow at Ibrox. I was going to Munich.
D-Day was 21st April. As I tried to eat my dinner I watched Reporting Scotland coming from an official Rangers supporters function from one of the suites in the main stand. The songs rang out and the tables were beaten like drums as the reporter finished his link. This was it. The atmosphere that met the teams as they came out was electric but nervous. It was all so, so close. That night that had evaded two generations of Rangers supporters was coming into view for mine. I was sure. Or so I kept telling myself.
When McCoist missed a sitter of a header in the very first minute, one that he would have scored 9 out of 10 times in the League, the knot in the pit of my stomach started to get bigger. When a crowd is waiting on news from the radio the worst thing you can hear is silence. It happened very quickly. The ‘Frogs’ had struggled in that shithole for all of two minutes before Voller had put them ahead. We saw the goal at half time on the concourse monitors. The finish was as deadly as you’d expect but the misplaced Bruges pass in midfield was ridiculous. Already rumours were abounding about Tapie’s dirty tricks but it didn’t make it any easier to watch.
The chances we missed in the second half were as agonising as the wait for good news from the Belgian front. It was like a force-field had been set-up around their goal. Not long after the final whistle, the tears flowed. I was convinced we would be playing my other childhood favourites in the European Cup Final. It was a dream I had so often that I felt it was real. When you have no perspective in life, as no spoiled 12 year-old boy has, this was as crushing a blow as I could imagine. Archie turned around on the way out. “You’ll see them do it son.” For the first time in my life I wasn’t quite 100% convinced.
Luckily kids are resilient. An international break had mended my broken heart but sadly broken Ally’s golden leg. There was a league title to be won at Airdrie on May Day. I was at the front of the terrace and never tire of seeing myself celebrating on the TV when McSwegan scored the only goal of the game. At the end a knowing nod between father and policeman allowed me to run onto the park to celebrate with my newly acquired Union Jack and on the return I spotted a small stone which I promptly smashed into the goals and ran that wee bit quicker towards the Rangers end.
All that was left in this remarkable year was to capture something that we hadn’t seen for fifteen years; the Treble. With the final at - of all places – the ‘Piggery’. Certificates were handed out that certified that you had ‘Sang the Sash in the Jungle’. I was in the Celtic end and was armed with a four pack of Andrex and a bag full of ripped up newspaper. This was party time and the sight that greeted the players must have looked the business. Hateley, as he had done so often to Aberdeen before, powered Rangers to a first half lead that was always going to be too much to pull back. A roasting hot May afternoon was the perfect way to end a truly remarkable campaign and making a further mess of that dump was like rubbing salt into gaping wounds.
That triumph, like the multitude that season, was celebrated with a hug between father and son. The Football Years nostalgia trail wasn’t the only inspiration for writing up these memories. On Sunday my father and I went to Hampden together for the first time in many a year. We followed Rangers all over the place in the ten years we were season ticket holders and shared the emotional journey that only football can send you on. In the last seven or eight years, for a variety of reasons, we have attended the same matches only fleetingly.
The special trips to Barcelona and Manchester of course but tickets spread apart. Sunday was like the old days and it’s only now I realise how lucky I was back then. Many have shared the same bond I’m talking about. Many have missed out or had it cut short. It is now nearly twenty years since that famous season and as I ponder having to settle down myself I wonder if I’ll ever be able to share anything close to that again with my boy. At the very least I’ll have some brilliant tales to tell him.