“‘I am certain the football world will agree with me that it is far better that the Rangers should die than a noble pastime be dragged into the mire”.
The fact the statement was made in a prominent football publication makes it all the more intriguing.
But those words weren’t made this season following a deluge of squirrels, spiteful media statements, media manipulation, absurd accusations, and the null and void campaign.
And it wasn’t even made in the months leading to the administration and subsequent liquidation of the Ibrox club in 2012.
It is from two centuries ago.
It was penned by the editor of the Scottish Football Journal in 1884 after Rangers forged a document to get around eligibility rules. I know, hard to believe.
It seemed to be such an easy ruse. Club official John Mackay is alleged to have turned a T into a J with his creative hand-writing to ensure that a player called J. Cook, who was on the books of the club at the time, was the actual player who faced Third Lanark in a Scottish Cup tie and not Tommy Cook who did play but wasn’t registered.
The indiscretion should have resulted in Rangers being turfed out of the Cup at the very least, and possibly suspended from the SFA. Neither happened.
In the next round the Rangers lost to Arbroath but complained about the length of the pitch. When it was found that the Gayfield pitch was all of 11 inches short, the tie was ordered to be replayed, which was won easily by the Kinning Park side.
Stephen O’Donnell in his excellently written and thoroughly-researched book, Tangled Up in Blue, notes that as far back as the mid-1870s the club had a “haughty, bad-tempered element associated with them”, regularly challenging results and decisions against them.
In an 1876 Scottish Cup match with Third Lanark a replay was ordered after Rangers, 1-0 winners, had kicked off at the start of both halves.
Rangers lost the replay but complained about the Third’s goalkeeper’s strip, claimed that one Third’s goal had a touch of handball about it and even that the game ended early when supporters ran onto the pitch (it’s not known which fans). The SFA weren’t listening.
In the first instance of a Cup final not being played, Rangers withdrew from the replay of the 1879 final against Vale of Leven having argued that a goal that would likely have given them victory was ruled offside, and appealed the decision, which the SFA refused to hear. Vale turned up for the replay, Rangers, as their own official site admits, went to Ayr for the horse racing, and Vale were declared champions.
Off the field, there were shenanigans from an early age. There’s little pleasant about the aforementioned John Mackay and the Scottish Athletic Journal was moved to describe him as guilty of financial and administrative irregularities in its 6 October 1885 edition, which added that the “social decadence” of Rangers began the day Peter McNeil resigned as match secretary to be replaced by Mr Mackay.
Even the Official Biography of Rangers was unable to rewrite history and describe him in a positive way.
“Rangers fell under the sway of John Wallace Mackay, a controversial and unpopular figure, whose tenure as match secretary coincided with one of the gloomiest periods of the club’s history,” its authors noted.
By the 1880s the Rangers’ supporters’ demographic had changed, to a more boorish group, leading to the Scottish Athletic Journal warning Queen’s Park about what they should prepare for ahead of the Scottish Cup tie in September 1882. There was no trouble but Rangers’ fanbase didn’t afford the then customary gentlemanly applause on the opposition scoring, and winning, and the situation between the two teams would worsen through the decade. A Cowlairs player described the Rangers’ following as the worst in Scotland after one ugly encounter.
Even the players were prone to acting like neds, and in an FA Cup tie, in the days when Scottish clubs regularly tried their hand in the oldest competition, the team were thrown out of their hotel en masse for drunken behaviour and arrived late at Anfield for the tie.
Eventually, realising that they were peeing against the wind in its open-minded journalistic treatment of the increasing popular Rangers, the Scottish Athletics Journal began to show more respect to the club. It could well have been the first instance of the media falling to the ‘charms’ of the former club from Govan.
Craig Stephen
Bibliography
Stephen O’Donnell: Tangled Up in Blue – The Rise and Fall of Rangers FC (2019)
Terry Morris: Vain Games of No Value? A Social Hostory of Association Football in Britain (2016)
Ronnie Esplin and Graham Walker: The Official Biography of Rangers (2011)
Scottish Athletic Journal
Rangers.co.uk
READ Stephen O’Donnell on how Rangers lost track of their foundation date…HERE.
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