This last year was worth the pain.......

This last year was worth the pain

Here’s why I think why……………….

Rangers Football Club has been around for 140 years, we’ve been through hell and back twice before this last year but in much more acute and personal ways. People died watching football at our stadium destroying families and loved ones lives. Something that should never happen no matter what team you support. So this last year is nothing compared to the pain the two disasters caused.

Before I go on I want to make something Crystal clear.

I’m one of the few people that’s involved either personally or vindictively that isn’t an expert on financial law, EBT’s (never heard of them till 18 months ago) corporate governance, how to run businesses in general never mind the confusing and tangled workings of high earning football players contracts.

I’m a lowly oil rig mechanic that works on drilling rigs. All I know is mechanics as its all I’ve done since I left school at 17 and joined the Royal Navy. Like many I’m surprised that Scotland seems to have so many “experts” on issues such as EBT’s, footballers contracts etc. Good luck to them.

One thing I do know though and was taught from an early age is to believe and trust the real experts that know how the aforementioned legal minefields work and the laws they are supposed to operate in.

Now, I’m going against my own principles here and going to mention our clubs history. The whole history saga was nothing to me and it bugged me that so many Bears used to engage with haters on this issue. Rangers have been and always will be Rangers football club, or as we called our club where I grew up in Glasgow and Troon “The Rangers”. I knew other fans would say our history stopped, that’s how “banter” (more about “Banter” later) works amongst football fans of opposing clubs, but even they know deep down that’s a lie our history is intact. It was the company that ran us that changed as it has in the past for us and many other clubs, not the football club, simple as that.

Like I said before, I was taught to believe the real experts and the powers in charge on legal issues. Everyone from The SFA, FIFA, UEFA, Law Lords, Lawyers and many other respected figures within the game have said we are still the same club yet these other “experts” now say that these people are wrong, even though we had lawyers hand picked by the haters to try and steal these titles, yet they failed, they thought Lord Nimo Smith would rip those titles from us because they “heard” he wasn’t a Rangers fan, yet as soon as he announced his finding completely exonerating Rangers of ANY wrong doing….he’s now a Mason that was never going to do anything other than destroy us. Why were so many online haters convinced we were going to have those titles stripped the days leading up to the finding??!!!!

This will all be confirmed when we win the top division next time, it will be title number 55. That’s where it ends for me. RANGERS are RANGERS are RANGERS.

Onto why I think this year will in the end turn out to be a good thing and actually worth the pain we went through.

We at long last got rid of the self centred and greedy David Murray, the man that caused all this grief. He should be in jail for this along with Craig Whyte and certain people with in Scottish football for what he did to our Football team never mind destroying the Scottish game. Although Murray is an oxymoron as his ego has in the end put us in a better place, not by his choice though.

After being burned by CW many of us were rightly sceptical about Charles Green. The best thing he will ever do in his time at Rangers will be to have refused to give up titles to stay in the SPL.

No matter what he does now, good bad or indifferent that action alone has saved us as a club and fan base decades of abuse. He was proved right to do what he did and I can’t thank him enough for that. At times he says things he shouldn’t and he has been caught out saying chalk then giving us cheese, that’s the way he is but he’s not breaking any laws or causing us financial, legal or on the pitch grief.

I am looking at yesterday as the “reset” button being fully depressed and released. No one has a single thing on us any more. It’s been proved beyond reasonable doubt that The Rangers (We the fans are The Rangers) were victims of crimes by other parties from the horrible BBC, Duff and Phelps, Craig Whyte, many people with in the nasty down trodden Scottish media pack and idiots from the outside that liked to mock the victims of the Ibrox disaster. People will hopefully be going to jail for these crimes.

The last year has also galvanised the fan base like I’ve never seen before in the 38 years of supporting The Rangers lead from the front by our modern day Bill Struth…..Ally McCoist. The way he’s conducted himself through all this has been amazing.

Thanks Ally.

Yes, there are issues between different supporters units, that’s the way it goes, so lets hope yesterday helps bring us closer again, draw lines in the sand lads, talk to each other and move on from petty issues it’s for the good of yourselves and the support..

I like what I see amongst the Bears and Bearettes. There’s great new blogs like the Copland Road Org, The Rangers Standard the various other podcasts that do themselves and the fans proud then the outstanding work of The RFFF. Then  guys like Chris Graham defending our corner in the hate filled media and Shane over in the States letting the greater footballing world know what has happened to us. All I can do is thank these various outlets and people for doing this for us. I hope they all keep doing what they are doing as they are very enjoyable to read and have a lot of very knowledgeable persons with in their groups

Now…….. “The Banter”

It’s gone, it’s no longer “Banter” it bile and hate.

It’s been brewing for decades and now come to the boil.
Personally I think the instigator of it all was Gerry McNee and his phone in on Radio Clyde and his columns in the various tabloids he wrote for. Believe it or not he’s a man I know as i grew up with his kids in Dumbreck. He was always decent to me as a kid I have to say.

That doesn’t matter though. He had an agenda against Rangers since the first phone call he took on the Clyde phone in, he was abrupt, rude and spiteful towards football fans in general that questioned him which in turn lead to a campaign against our club. He would criticize everything our players would do from the clothes they wore to the way they kicked a ball. The nasty and downright vile liitle man Graham Speirs took over that mantle from McNee, and boy has he covered himself in self glory in the way he’s acted this last 10 years towards us. At long last though he’s been caught out big time with his lies by being destroyed live on national television by Chris Graham, something that was wonderful to watch.
The Rangers have kept this man career going, 90% of his stuff is nothing to do with football it’s to do with issues with in our club he “sees” then twists and lies about. Yesterday he was caught out yet again right after the Lord Nimo Smith verdict. Instead of saying anything positive he tweeted parts of the findings yet missing out the important stuff. Why the hell is this man employed at all?

The “rivalry” between us and other SPL clubs is ruined for ever IMO. This isn’t something that will be smoothed over in a few years. Their hate, bile and jealousy of the countries biggest club has crippled them and the rivalry to a dangerous level. I blogged about this before in "The Damage done" There’s many to blame for this. For me it’s down to guys like Speirs, the once  proud but now toxic BBC and various others that want headlines of a nasty nature instead of trying to help smooth tensions.

I don’t see anything but hate filled games when we get back to the top.

As for the SPL and SFA, by Christ are they a laughing stock around the footballing world. The men at the top their should be sacked and rendered unemployable. Even yesterday, the day the biggest footballing crisis Scottish football has seen was to come to a “close” the head honchos were no where to be seen and refused to give statements. REALLY? That is unbelievable that a company would be run like that.

 I know if I performed like them in my trade I’d be on the next plane home. The sad thing is they won’t get the sack, they will leave on their own accord in a few years with huge pats on the back saying how well they did in their time in office. That’s how unprofessional the game is in Scotland…..along with big bonuses and pensions

There was one media outlet that was very fair balanced and honest through all this. That was STV and their lads on twitter. When yesterdays announcement was made I was looking forwards to their articles and tweets about it, only to get a giant kick in the balls from them. They didn’t report it in a balanced way, they looked for the tiniest bits of bad news they could and twisted it. I found that very, very disheartening. NO Rangers fan wanted a reporter to side with us, all we wanted was fair and balanced reporting, STV gave us this until the final outcome when they turned round and kicked us in the head. Such a shame.

One journalist who I feel has been fair balanced and respectful during all this has been Richard Wilson at the Herald. He’s given us the news, good or bad in laymen’s terms with no dramatic  or twisted words that bend the truth to sell papers like the Record and Sun do.

I feel we have been let down by the club though. They still won’t defend us against attacks that have been constant for a year. Yesterday Jim Traynor should have been in his office bright and early ready for the attack and be there for us, the fans to extinguish any fires that were started in the media, he wasn’t., he was no where to be seen yet again. He should have been on that panel last night with Spiers, Chris Graham and Toxic Thompson. What is his job exactly???
The club need to fix this now, we are sick of being attacked then the club doing next to nothing.

I’ve rambled on wwwway too long and I bet most won’t have read this far, and I don’t blame you.

Anyway. It’s simple. For us the pain is over, no one can touch us now.

This last year has set up a solid bedrock for the clubs future, now it’s over, I’m actually glad it happened as I want a stable club for my kids to follow, it looks like we have that now Bears.

WATP 54 and counting

****Late edit. I've been told that Jim Traynor has an illness in the family that kept him away from rangers duties yesterday. I hope his family member gets well soon. Apologise for misinformation on my part****

Franky