Ten Days In May

There are few things in life more odious than the sectarianism that still somehow manages to attach itself to the rivalry between Rangers and Celtic. Even though the two sides play each other a minimum of four times each season, every match between them seems is like a spit-flecked stand off between two angry men, both of whom hold the other a being responsible for all the ills of the world, singularly unable to come to terms with the simple reality that both have more in common with each other than either would like to admit. The very name "Old Firm" derives from the fact that both clubs were, in their early days, quite happy to exploit the commercial benefits of this sectarianism. Such matters make it very difficult to be objective about Rangers or Celtic from a footballing point of view, but even their harshest rivals have to concede that this year's Rangers team has a chance of doing something remarkable - winning four trophies in one season. Here's the story so far. They have already won the Scottish League Cup, having beaten Dundee United in penalties at Hampden Park earlier this season. In the Scottish Premier League, they are a point behind Celtic, but have a game in hand. They have three league matches left to play. They are already through to the final of the UEFA Cup and the final Scottish Cup. Now, over ten days between the 14th and the 24th of May, a remarkable season comes to a head with five matches that could yet see them walk away with next to nothing, or end the season as arguably the most successful club side in the world.

Leg One: Wednesday 14th May. UEFA Cup Final - Zenit St Petersburg: Ironically, the most difficult leg of their five match marathon might just prove to be the first. Zenit St Petersburg are no mugs. Owned and funded by the Russian giants Gazprom, money has been poured into ZPS, both on and off the pitch. They don't have too many names that stand out as household names in the west (captain Anatoliy Tymoschuck is probably their best known player), but they knocked Bayern Munich out of the UEFA Cup semi-finals and are the current defending Russian champions. Rangers might have a slight advantage with the match being played at the City Of Manchester Stadium, but they face a stern test if they are to become the first Scottish club to win the UEFA Cup.

Leg Two: Saturday 17th May. SPL - Motherwell: Four days after the UEFA Cup final, it's back to the grit of the Scottish Premier League with a trip to Fir Park to play Motherwell. Mark McGhee's team have recovered admirably from the death of their captain Phil O'Donnell at the end of December. They are currently just one place behind Rangers in the SPL, although the lop-sided nature of Scottish football means that there are twenty-six points between them. They are, however, playing for third place in the league and a place in next year's UEFA Cup, so this isn't going to be an easy match for them either. Failure to win any of their remaining league matches will leave matters out of their control and Rangers depending on Celtic dropping points in on e of their two remaining SPL matches.

Leg Three: Monday 19th May. SPL - St Mirren: Skip forward a further forty-eight hours, and Rangers are on their travels again, this time to Love Street, Paisley, to play SPL also-rans St Mirren. The Buddies (to give them their nickname) are third from bottom in the SPL, though they are safe from fears of relegation because of the situation at Gretna. St Mirren away should be a routine enough three points for Rangers, but the worry for them is likely to be tiredness, as their third match in five days.

Leg Four: Thursday 22nd May. SPL - Aberdeen: Another potentially tricky away trip (none of these final five matches are at Ibrox, in case you were wondering). There's a prickly history between Rangers and Aberdeen, and Dons supporters that still remember when their team briefly usurped Rangers to do battle with Celtic in the early-to-mid 1980s will be more than happy to cost Rangers another SPL title. Their fourth match in eight days, and it's another potential banana skin. Aberdeen have had a bit of a nothing season in mid-table in the SPL, but are certainly capable of ruining Ranger's league championship ambitions.

Leg Five: Saturday 24th May. Scottish Cup - Queen Of The South: It's back to Hampden Park for the final match of the season - The Scottish Cup final against Queen Of The South. By the time this match comes around, we'll know whether Rangers are playing for their fourth trophy of the season or whether they're trying to rescue some consolation from the wreckage of the previous nine days. Queen Of The South are set to finish in fourth place in division one of the Scottish League this season, but they beat Aberdeen in an exceptional semi-final and might just be capable of causing a surprise.

So, the best case scenario (for Rangers at least) would see them cruising to victory in all five matches, winning three trophies to add to the Scottish League Cup that they already have under their belt. The worst case scenario would see them lost to Zenit St Petersburg, drop points in their remaining league matches to gift the SPL championship to Celtic and then, worn out and with their spirit broken, end up humiliated by QotS on the last day of the season. No matter how hard I look at that list of fixtures, I still can't work out which is more likely.

Kings Of The Stone Age

I have been involved in the running of a couple of amateur football clubs, and the biggest single issue is funding. How do you secure sponsorship for a club with no supporters (and, occasionally, less than eleven players)? It's not cheap, either. Chances are, no matter how small your club is, that you'll have to raise the best part of a couple of thousand pounds to cover the cost of pitches and referees, before you even get onto the thorny issue of kit and equipment - and let's not even get onto the subject of trying to subsidise an end of season beano. In many respects, it's little surprise that the number of people playing football is falling, year on year.

Considering these uphill battles (and running one of these clubs is nothing if not a series of minor uphill battles - I may get around to putting my Sunday League Memoirs up on here one day), it's small wonder that some new clubs go to great lengths to make their lives a little easier, and this has been taken to something approaching a logical extreme by 27 year-old Scot Kenny Anderson, who is claiming that his new football club is the oldest in the world. The Foot-Ball Club of Edinburgh was formed in 1827, and reportedly played until it folded in 1841. Anderson has a couple of friends in high places, including Edinburgh South-West MP (and Chancellor of the Exchequer) Alastair Darling and that well-known football historian, Scotland manager George Burley. A quick look at the club's website confirms that these claims appear to be landing them a few advantages - a friendly match at Heart of Midlothian's Tynecastle stadium for their first match, a sponsorship deal with Umbro and more national press in the last few days than most semi-professional clubs get in the course of an entire season.

Given the level of ingenuity at play here, it seems almost a shame to point out that there is nothing to link this newly-formed side to the club that folded in 1841. Anderson states that he had the idea after a visit to the Hampden Park museum of Scottish football, which contains the paperwork relating to the original club. Cameron is justifying his belief that the club is one and the same as one that hasn't kicked a ball for over 160 years through some vague statements about "his desire to carry on the work" of the club's founder, one John Hope, who reportedly set the club up in order to "help local kids". Strangely, it doesn't mention the anti-popery classes that he is recorded as having held with groups of boys. All of this would be so much harmless self-promotion were it not for the fact that Anderson (and numerous others) were now petitioning FIFA for his brand new team to be recognised as the oldest in the world.

As you may recall, the claim of being The Oldest Football Club In The World is a proud claim that has been much-contested over the years, but FIFA recognises Sheffield FC, of the Unibond League, as the oldest. They have spent much of the last year celebrating their 150th anniversary, culminating with a match against Ajax at Bramall Lane last weekend. They also played a strong Internazionale at Bramall Lane in front of a crowd of over 18,000 people and are one of the very few clubs to hold the FIFA Order Of Merit. Such riches have cast many envious glances from afar, and the suspicion is that somewhere along the line someone might just have noticed this and decided that they would like a piece of it. For the Scottish media, it's a chance to launch the claim that Scotland invented football (which overlooks the fact that there was nothing like a unified code for the game until over two decades after the club split up - for which Sheffield are universally recognised as having been involved in, and that Hope's Edinburgh Rules, which Scottish football historians claim were as important in the FA's 1863 Laws Of Football as the more widely attributed Cambridge Rules of 1848, were written thirteen years after Foot-Ball Club of Edinburgh folded).

No-one south of the border would ever dispute the importance of the Scottish contribution towards the evolution of the game of football, but a subtle rewriting of history is taking place here. It is impossible to accept the premise that this is simply the same club, which hasn't played a single match in 167 years. It is, frankly, insulting to the people that have worked hard, often in the face of what looked like insurmountable odds, to keep the real World's Oldest Football Club going for 150 years continuously. I could just as easily claim to have reformed the Brewers Company of London, a guild who are recorded as having hired out their hall to "ffooteballepleyers" in 1421 and claim them as the Oldest Football Club In The World. It's worth nothing if your club hasn't been in continuing existence. It's all very well talking about "good work" and "charity", but the sudden reappearance of The Football Club Of Edinburgh reeks more of self-promotion and petty one-up-man-ship to me.

God Save The Queens

The English FA Cup isn't the only cup competition to have provided its fair share of shocks. The Scottish Cup has also been full of surprises, with Celtic having already been knocked out at home by Aberdeen, and it was the Dons' turn to be on the receiving end of a bloody nose yesterday, when they were on the receiving end of a beating after an extraordinary match against First Division side Queen Of The South at Hampden Park yesterday afternoon. Everything seemed to be proceeding very much as per normal with the scores level at 1-1 at half-time, before five goals in eleven minutes at the start of the second half left The Doonhamers as the 4-3 winners, and with a place booked in their first ever Scottish Cup final. They also stand an excellent chance of being Scotland's representatives in the UEFA Cup next season. Rangers' 2-0 win at Partick Thistle set up a semi-final match for them against St Johnstone - should they win, their place is already guaranteed in the Champions League next season, leaving Queen Of The South in the UEFA Cup as the Scottish Cup finalists - an exceptional achievement for a club that has not played in the top division of Scottish football since 1964.

Queen Of The South were formed in 1919, taking their unique name from a nickname for their home town of Dumfries, which was coined in the 1850s by a poet that was running for election as the town's MP. The club also lays claim to being the only British football club to be mentioned in The Bible (although it is, to say the least, likely that the writers of it were referring to the Queen Of Sheba, rather peering into the future to talk about Scotland's fifteenth best team). Their nickname, "The Doonhamers", is also a general nickname for the town itself. Dumfries is one of the most southerly towns in the whole of Scotland, and the name is said to refer to people from the town working away referring to the town as "doon hame" (or "down home"). The club's greatest ever player, Hughie Gallacher, was also one of their earliest, playing for them during the 1920/21 season before going on to find greater fame with Newcastle United. The club's most successful period came in the early and mid-1950s. Having been relegated in 1951, they were promoted straight back into the top division a year later. A record crowd of over 26,000 saw them play Hearts in a Scottish Cup quarter-final at Palmerston Park (the only football ground in Britain to be named after a former prime minister), and they finished in sixth place in the Scottish League in 1956.

Like so many other Scottish clubs, their history since then has largely been undistinguished. They made their first cup final appearance in 1997, losing 1-0 to Falkirk in the Scottish Challenge Cup. They also hold a record for having had one of the oldest players ever to play senior football. In 1992, with the reserve team short on players, manager Ally McLeod (who had, of course, managed Scotland in their disastrous 1978 World Cup campaign) picked himself to play, even converting a second half penalty in a 7-1 defeat by St Mirren reserves. They were promoted to the Scottish League First Division in 2002, and have stayed their ever since. Their run to Hampden Park this season has taken them past Peterhead, Linlithgow, Greenock Morton and Dundee. The only thing stopping them from European football next season now is an unlikely looking victory for St Johnstone against Rangers in the delayed second semi-final. It might just be time for The Doonhammers to start dreaming on an unlikely European adventure.

Franchising In Scotland

In Scotland, the harsh realities of the wrong people getting involved in football clubs has been even more pronounced that it has been in England in recent years. Meadowbank Thistle were unceremoniously moved to Livingston, and several clubs have been left homeless or playing in two-sided grounds because of aborted development projects, but the most convoluted story of all has a particular relevance today, as it involves the financial collapse of two clubs, which led to Gretna FC being voted into the Scottish League in circumstances that are best described as "murky". Their seemingly imminent collapse provides an apt coda to a story that should bring shame upon the administrators of Scottish football.

Clydebank Juniors FC had been stalwarts of the Scottish junior football scene since the end of the nineteenth century, and found their way into the senior game there when they were controversially merged with East Stirlingshire to form ES Clydebank by owners that wanted to cash in on what they perceived as bigger crowds on the outskirts of Glasgow. The club lasted for just one season, 1964/65, before being separated through after a lengthy and messy court case. Clydebank FC were admitted to the Scottish League in their own right in 1967, following the collapse of Third Lanark. They had a fairly unremarkable stay in the Scottish League, but their troubles started in 1996, when their owners decided that what the club really needed was a new stadium. Their stadium, Kilbowie Park, was demolished and the club moved eight miles up the road to groundshare at Dumbarton. With crowds halved thanks to playing away from home every week and rent to pay, they moved on again, this time to share with Greenock Morton, twenty miles from Clydebank, and by the summer of 2002 were in a pretty terrible financial state. No-one, however, could have prepared them for what was to follow.

Airdrieonians FC were one of Scottish football's better known names. They were a reasonably regular face in the top division of Scottish football, and made the Scottish Cup final in 1992 and 1995 (losing in turn to Rangers and Celtic), as well as representing Scotland in the European Cup Winners Cup in 1993, where they were beaten over two matches by Sparta Prague. Their problems started in 1994, when they vacated their Broomfield Stadium to groundshare with another club, Clyde, with the intention of building a new stadium. To say that it was financially ruinous would be something of an understatement. Delays in planning permission meant that they were unable to move into their new home, the Shyberry Excelsior Stadium, until 1998, by which time crowds had plummeted and the club was in a desperate financial state. Their fate was sealed with the unexpected death of their sole director, Joe Rowan, in 1999. Rowan had kept the club running more or less single-handedly over the previous decade, and without him they were suddenly rudderless. Former Spurs striker Steve Archibald attempted to take control of the club in 2000. Having been given "preferred bidder" status by the club's administrators, KPMG, he brought in a number of Spanish players at considerable cost, but they failed in the pitch and Archibald was removed after failing to maintain promised payments to them. The club folded in May 2002, leaving a free space in the Scottish Football League, and it was at this point that the fortunes of Airdrieonians and Clydebank met.

With Gretna having been hastily voted into the league in the place of Airdrieonians (there have been persistent rumours of money having changed hands regarding Bill Barr, the owner of Ayr United, who was owed a sizeable amount of money for the construction of Airdrie's new stadium and stood to benefit if Airdrie failed to pull through in any form), the newly-formed Airdrie United went looking for a back door route into Scottish football. They found the answer at Clydebank, where a homeless club was playing twenty miles from home in front of tiny crowds. Their founder, a businessman called John Hall, bought Clydebank FC, changed its name to Airdrie United and moved the club to Airdrie. Clydebank's supporters had put in a rival bid for the spare place in the Scottish league, but were rejected in favour of Gretna. Clydebank continue to play to this day, in the Scottish junior leagues (one of the two equivalents of non-league football in Scotland, the other being the Highland League) in front of crowds that would put many clubs in the Scottish Second & Third Divisions to shame. Airdrie United currently sit in place in the Scottish League Second Division.

Meanwhile, the other main beneficiaries of this farce, Gretna, were bank-rolled by Brook Mileson into the SPL, until his ill health (and, reportedly, the reluctance of his son - who holds his power of attorney - to throw more money into the club) undid the self-proclaimed "fairytale" of the village team that got the Premier League. With only ten players currently available for their trip to Aberdeen tomorrow, it seems unlikely at the time of writing that Gretna will even survive until the end of the season, although they will probably be able to re-group at a more realistic level in the future. The likelihood of football supporters no longer putting all their faith in the whims of the very wealthy, however, seems to be considerably less likely.

Too Much, Too Young?

Some of you will have already seen the piece that I wrote for "Pitch Invasion" on the boom & bust football culture in Essex over the last fifteen years or so. The dangers of being dependent on a single benefactor are being thrown into even sharper perspective north of the border, where Gretna FC's existence is now under threat as the result of a serious illness contracted by their long-time owner and benefactor. With few assets and money draining out of the club in an alarming fashion, the big concern is that they will not be able to survive a spell in administration. It is, I have to say, yet another cautionary tale for supporters hoping that a multi-millionaire will walk into their club and make everything alright.

Gretna spent their first few decades scrabbling around in the lower reaches of the English non-league game, before transferring into the Scottish League in 2002. With Mileson providing considerable financial backing, they soon showed that anyone with a bit of financial muscle could overpower the semi-professionals of the Scottish lower divisions, and they became the first club in the history of Scottish football to be promoted from the Third Division to the SPL in successive seasons. As they won the Scottish Second Division title in 2006, they also made it to the Scottish Cup final. They lost on penalties at Hampden Park against Hearts after a 1-1 draw but, with Hearts having already booked a Champions League place after finishing second to Celtic in the SPL, Gretna had already booked themselves a place in the UEFA Cup, although this ended in defeat against Derry City.

Their problems started last summer, with promotion to the SPL. Their stadium, Raydale Park, had not been significantly developed in tandem with the team and fell well short of the standard reqiured for regular visits from the likes of Celtic and Rangers. The club were faced with an almost impossible dilemma. Should they redevelop their ground in Gretna? What point was there in building a 6,000 seater stadium in a village with a population of less than 3,000 people? They elected to play their home matches for the 2007/08 season 75 miles away at Motherwell's Fir Park whilst planning permission was being approved to redevelop Raydale. Their first season has been a more or less unmitigated disaster. Unsurprisingly, crowds at Fir Park have been poor (the 501 hardy souls that turned up for their recent match against Dundee United is a record low for the SPL), and the club's inspirational manager, Rowan Alexander was sacked in November. More troubling, however, was the health of Mileson, who was admitted to hospital last month and found to be suffering from a brain infection which has left him unable to run the club.

Matters came to a head in the new year, when it became apparent that the players and staff hadn't been paid for some weeks. Gretna's contract at Fir Park is costing them £600,000, and to put this into perspective, they have had Raydale Park valued at just £800,000. Fourteen players left during the transfer window, and the club have been rooted at the bottom of the SPL for the entire duration of the season, with just four wins to their name. Mileson's son, Brook Junior, is running the club in his father's absence, but he is not authorised to sign cheques on his father's or the club's behalf, and there have been widespread rumours that he is not quite as committed to the Gretna cause as his father was. Alexander's replacement, Dave Irons, has left to go to First Division club Morton, and the club are now considering going into administration, although the danger with doing that is that the trustee appointed to manage the club's finances might just decide that it is simply not feasible to even continue until the end of the season.

Most worrying of all for Gretna is what seems to be a somewhat defeatist attitude within the club itself. Consider this interview with the club's chief executive, Graeme Muir. Comments such as some of those made are probably at best unhelpful in securing the club's long-term future. Ultimately, though, it may all prove to be academic. With the level of debts and the sort of wage bill that Gretna are labouring under at present, it seems unlikely that the club can survive in its current form. The fact of the matter is that the club have allowed themselves to become over-reliant on Brook Mileson and his money (in spite of the setting up of youth academies and free travel initiatives, both of which hinted towards a club aiming for self-sufficiency), and the harsh reality is that the club allowed itself to become run on a hopelessly unsustainable business model that was entirely dependent upon the goodwill of one man.

There is little doubt that Brook Mileson is a man of honourable intentions, and we obviously wish him a safe and speedy recovery. It has to be said, however, that a tempering of ambitions may be in order at Gretna Football Club. It's all very well to talk about "fairy tales", but a club expanding too quickly with no sensible business plan is always likely to end in the death of the club concerned in the long term, which doesn't sit particularly comfortably with the belief that all fairy tales should have happy endings. With Raydale Park having been allowed to run to rack and ruin since the club switched to Motherwell, it's difficult to see how this will end well for them - one would hope that a sustainably run club, owned by its supporters will be the eventual outcome, but it will probably take the death of this Gretna Football Club for that to happen.

A Stirling Performance

My various rantings on Scottish football have probably been boring all you bar one person all week (and there's every chance that they're boring him too), but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to give a mention to East Stirlingshire - possibly the worst team in the history of British senior football. This is a team that has amassed a grand total of 66 points in the last four seasons, has a wage cap of £10 per week, and has the only unpaid manager in the whole of British football. Clearly, there's something going on here that deserves my further attention.

They're so bad that the story goes that the other Scottish League teams are trying to get the League to bring in promotion and relegation just to get rid of them. But, having said all of the above, one can't deny that there's something inherently charming about a team that is completely wretched, week in week out, and that just doesn't seem to really care. Also, their website (although it has one or two irritating noises on it) is humourous and good-natured (if you want to check this for yourselves, I'd suggest a quick visit to their Player Profiles section, where right-back David Harvey names "scoring two own goals against Queen's Park" as his "Most Memorable Moment"). It's also notable that only one of the players isn't single. It would appear that the chat-up line of, "hey, baby, you might have heard of me - I play for East Stirlingshire" doesn't work. Mind you, on a maximum wage of £10 per week, they'd hardly be able to keep the average gold-digging WAG in the syle to which they've become accustomed.

Of course, East Stirlingshire's one big contribution to world football is that they gave Sir Alex Ferguson his first break as a manager. Ferguson was paid £40 a week when he joined them in 1974, and when he joined them they had just eight players, and no goalkeepers. Unsurprisingly, he lasted just six months at Firs Park before being tempted away to the bright lights of St Mirren (funnily enough, East Stirlingshire were above St Mirren at the time that Ferguson jumped ship, but you see what I mean).

During the 1970s and 1980s, Meadowbank Thistle earnt a cult support for their ineptness (which dried up when they got fed up with being rubbish, changed their name to Livingston and moved thirty miles from their Edinburgh base). In the 1990s, Cowdenbeath were nicknamed the "Blue Brazil" in the 1990s and the same phenomenon happened (in case you were wondering what happened to them, they won the Scottish League Third Division under the managership of the former Bolton, Wolves and Hibernian striker Mixu Paateleinen - he must occasionally wake up wondering how his career ended up with this bizarre outcome). East Stirlingshire, for whatever reason, don't seem to inspire the same amount of affection. It's a pity. Players who play for ten pounds a week and a ground with a sheer brick wall at one end of their ground... Such eccentricities should be nurtured and encouraged. If you lived there, wouldn't you rather be involved with this sort of thing than the underlyingly sectarian, money-drenched nonsense that follows Rangers & Celtic around?

Say Hi-Hi To Your Mom

I thought I'd continue with my Caledonian theme, what with the Scottish League starting this weekend and everything. The plight of East Stirlingshire to follow tomorrow (or maybe later tonight), but tonight I'd thought I'd focus on Glasgow's long-forgotten "third" club (and I say this in full knowledge of the existence of Partick Thistle): Third Lanark.

Third Lanark were formed before either Celtic or Rangers. 1872, to be precise. As you may have gathered from the name, they were initially connected to the military, but the link soon ended, and the Hi-His (so nicknamed because their ground was an altitude which meant that it overlooked the rest of Glasgow) became one of the powerhouses of early Scottish football. They won the Scottish League in 1904 and the Scottish Cup twice. As Celtic and Rangers cemented their stranglehold on the Scottish League, though, Lanark struggled. They yo-yoed between the two divisions of the Scottish League in the 1920s and 1930s, but settled again in Division One in the mid-1950s, and reached the final of the Scottish League Cup as recently as 1959.

During their last great period, a number of (relatively) well-known players played for them. Bobby Craig, who would go on to star for Newcastle and Celtic, was one. Ally McLeod (best known for his magnificently deluded management of Scotland at the 1978 World Cup) both started and finished career playing for them. A total of of eight years. It wasn't enough. In the early 60s, they took the financially ruinous decision to build a new stand at a time when their crowds were tumbling. By April 1967, just 297 people turned up to see one of their last matches, a home match against the newly-formed Clydebank. They went into liquidation that summer. A subsequent Board Of Trade report showed considerable financial mis-management on the part of the club's directors, including a rumour that the club's final chairman had attempted to manipulate the club's difficulties in order to personally profit from any sale of the ground.

There was a certain irony that it was development of their ground that turned out to sound their death knell, because it is the ground itself that they are now probably most famous for. Initially known as Hampden Park, it was passed to them from Queens Park, who even now play at the current Hampden Park ground. They soon changed its name to Cathkin Park, and it was one of Scotland's biggest grounds, with a capacity of 50,000. After the club folded in 1967, Glasgow City Council took it over, and it is still used for schools football matches today. Somewhat remarkably, they didn't landscape the area, and it makes for quite an eerie sight. The supporters largely preferred to transfer their support to a Scottish Junior League side Pollok, who even now get by far the biggest attendances in their league (and, at around 600, considerably more than many lower division Scottish League clubs).

Pollok's best days could yet be ahead of them. The Scottish League is currently debating whether to introduce re-election or promotion and relegation from the bottom of Division Three, and they would surely be amongst the favourites to make the step up. Might I suggest that, should they ever manage this, they change their name to Third Lanark and their colours to red and white? Either tonight or tomorrow, I'll be taking a look at the team that they'd be most likely to replace.

Too Orangey For Popes

When I got in from work this evening, I sat down and watched the somewhat infamous Rangers-Celtic derby match from 1987. As I said yesterday, this watch something that I'd been delighted to find in order to download. It's a match that has gone down in history as one of the most ill-tempered in the history of British football.

In 1987, Rangers had brought in a number of Englishmen to bolster their squad, with immediate results. Graham Roberts, Chris Woods, Mark Falco, Terry Butcher and Trevor Francis were amongst those lured north by a pot of gold, and the dividends were immediate when they snatched the title back from Celtic (who themselves had, the season in before that, only won the league from Hearts on the last day of the season by beating St Mirren 5-0 away from home whilst Hearts blew their chances by losing at Dundee). The early 1980s had been the leanest time that either of the Old Firm could remember, but as their challengers (Aberdeen and Dundee United) faded, the big Glasgow clubs scented blood, and by 1987 their hegemony was well on the way to being restored.

There was nothing much to indicate that the match between the two sides would go off in the way that it did. Celtic were four points clear (in an era when Scottish clubs still played two points for a win), so it was a vital match for Rangers to win. Watching it back, I'm struck by the sheer intensity of the atmosphere. The crowd is a wall of noise from the very start, and the players waste no time whatsoever in kicking lumps out of each other. The key incident came after seventeen minutes, when self-proclaimed "playboy" striker Frank MacAvennie clattered into Rangers goalkeeper Chris Woods. The words "handbags" spring immediately to mind, but the full-on assault by Graham Roberts and Terry Butcher that followed was anything but. To general disbelief, MacAvennie and Woods were sent off, and Butcher went into the book. This being the age before substitute goalkeepers, Roberts went in goal for Rangers.

It should, of course, have been all over at this point. Celtic raced into a two-goal lead - Rangers might have had all manner of attacking options, but their defending with ten men was atrocious. It was only a mixture of profligate Celtic finishing and surprisingly competent goalkeeping by Roberts that kept Rangers in the match. With Ally McCoist having pulled one back for Rangers, it was time for Butcher's moment in the limelight. After challenging Alan McKnight for the ball (and deservedly conceding a foul), he took a well-aimed kick at the prone Celtic goalkeeper. A straight red card followed, even though he had already been involved in the earlier flare-up.

With the roofs of the Ibrox stands threatening to lift clean off, Richard Gough scrambled a last minute equalizer. Graham Roberts then covered himself in a very dubious type of glory at the other end of the pitch, first by clearly diving at a challenge from Owen Archdeacon, and then following that up by leading the supporters in one of their oh-so-charming sectarian songs. After the match (as noted in the comments below), the three players sent off (along with Roberts) found themselves in court on criminal charges, although the charges were later dropped. On the pitch, Rangers' dramatic point didn't make much difference in the long-term. Celtic won the league with a record 72 points.

I'm told that the sectarianism isn't as bad these days. Money is the name of the game nowadays. Celtic sign Protestants and Rangers sign Catholics, because winning and making money are more important than anything else, including upholding long-standing religious bigotries. Having said that, though, if or when Kenny Miller (who has joined Celtic from Wolverhampton Wanderers) plays for Celtic, he'll be only the third player in recent times to have played for both the blue and green halves of Glasgow. Both clubs have banned sectarianism chanting from their grounds, and most of the bile within the Scottish domestic game is aimed towards the big two from the other SPL clubs and their supporters, who largely wish they'd just piss off to England so that their league had an element of competitiveness about it again. Of course, English clubs don't want two rich clubs with average crowds of over 50,000 joining their league and further lessening their (already rapidly receding) chances of winning anything. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

Hearts, of course, blew their duopoly apart last season by beating Rangers into second place and winning the Scottish Cup, but whether they can continue this form next season or not is open to debate. Their season was pleasingly pantomime-esque, of course, what with George Burley quitting because the chairman was reported to be trying to pick the team and all. If anything, it was a miracle that they held off Rangers' challenge. It's doubtful that they'll have a better chance to break the big two's stranglehold on the league, though. But still: at least with two teams having a realistic chance of winning the league, Scotland is twice as competitive as England at the moment.