For many, this is a matter of rejoicing as merely seeing them charged is regarded as a victory. It is now for the court to decide on guilt or innocence and we wouldn’t want anything to prejudice a fair trial.
On the other hand some of us found it rather bitter sweet. It was all avoidable. I’ll put my hand up and say I made mistakes, wished I had been more decisive, etc, etc. What is done is done but I hope that both Rangers fans and fans of other clubs learn something from this debacle which has crippled our club.
Having taken an interest in the finances of the club in a fairly detailed way from when I first woke up to David Murray’s stewardship of the club - the lunatic signing of Tore Andre Flo being my alarm bell - I had become convinced that no-one could sensibly invest in Ranger from a commercial point of view if they wished to see the club run at a profit or to gain from an uplift in share value from an IPO at normal rates. It just can’t be done. Football clubs just don’t operate like that in Scotland.
Over the 20 years or so of Murray’s reign Rangers competed because of cash injections from the likes of King, Joe Lewis and Murray himself at a rate which meant a subsidy of roughly £5million a year. Take that money away and the quality of players and performance drops unless you replace it from other sources or actually run the club in a very prudent manner with huge emphasis on youth and careful recruitment. It then becomes a gamble.
There was a period when within Ibrox Chris Graham, David Leggat and myself were known as “the arch-agitators” - Craig Houston would quickly join us in that particular ID parade. Being on that list meant that you could have the police visit your home as a result of spurious complaints, be hauled in front of the Court of Session for publishing the truth, be harassed on an almost daily basis with legal letters and emails, and have stories drip-fed into the media seeking to undermine you via allegations of intimidation etc. An utterly vile campaign designed to shut people up.
Thankfully, whilst some sucked at the tit of those in charge of club, enough Bears got up off their backsides and joined us on the streets campaigning to undermine those in charge - what might have been a life of wine and roses for successive directors and employees spelt long-term mediocrity for the club.
There were two wars fought - the “air war” as we called it was fought by Dave King, Dougie Park, Paul Murray, George Letham and their associates - buying tranches of shares with unencumbered capital on a scale not practical for fans groups.
The “ground war” was fought on the internet, the media and at Ibrox - we knew we had to educate and inform the Bears of what we were uncovering - and slowly we made progress. The carpet-bombing of Ibrox with leaflets and posters was a vital part of that campaign - we were getting the message out to fans on a massive scale without it being filtered through the bitter prism of the Scottish press. The Union of Fans brought together the soldiers for that campaign - the air and the ground campaigns are what put the club into the hands of the current board. Nothing and no-one else.
It hasn’t been pretty and so much damage has been done to the club in the last few years that I fear it might be decades before put finally to right.
Part of that healing process will be legal - and I hope that it will be a fair one without hysteria - for we now see clearly how passion can be manipulated. The law will now take it’s course and the working out of any court cases to come will be sweeter - whatever the verdicts or whatever the sentences - than any amount of rage on social media.