I AM a wee bit like Groucho Marx - I wouldn't join any club which would have me as a member. Sure, I joined the rugby club when I left school - I had to, just to get a game, but, once I was banned as a professional - because I was being paid to write about rugby, it was a nice opportunity to save on the annual membership fee. I could no longer play (officially), but I still had all the benefits I wanted - I still got into the bar after the match, while I was getting reactions from players and coaches. Being banned didn't hurt me.
I never joined the local golf club - I had no desire to mingle with the smug little social climbers there and as for the Masons - the Mafia of the Mediocre, no thanks. I've always been a fully-paid-up member of the Awkward Squad, and proud of it; I am equally proud of my degree from the School of Hard Knocks, my M.Phil from the School of Having the Shit Kicked Out of Me and my Doctorate from the College of Cleaning-up After the Idiots Above Me.
We come into this world with nothing, we leave in the same state - albeit a lot more worn and battered, but, if we leave a large fortune - all that is certain is that, what the government leaves to our children, they will squander.
But, there are people who need order in their lives; who need someone or something to look up to; who believe in something and who, hopefully, just before the lights go out, realise - I've been fooled - big time.
A congregation of such true believers met outside Ibrox Stadium last week, to be addressed by John "Bomber" Brown - one of their own. This congregation, let's call them "Ra Peepul" are hurting right now; they are wandering in the wilderness, unsure and fearful of the future - we should pity them.
But, searching for leadership and guidance has always been the way of "Ra Peepul", as these followers of what was once Rangers FC, like to call themselves.
The legend has it that four young oarsmen from the Vale of Leven, pulled their rowing boat up out of the River Clyde at Glasgow Green one day and saw some other young men playing this new game - association football. They were hooked, found some like-minded chums and soon afterwards they started their own team - "Rangers FC", named apparently after an English rugby team.
Rangers grew and prospered and within 50-years was the largest and most-important team in Scotland. That team then decided to actively court the ultra-Protestant Ulster shipyard workers and others who had fled to Scotland in the wake of the Irish troubles which followed-on from the Easter Rising of 1916. These new fans hated Roman Catholics, many of whom had fled to Scotland from Ireland since the potato famines of the mid-19th century and who had formed a successful football club - Celtic FC.
Very quickly the politics and religious intolerance of Ireland was mirrored in the Rangers v Celtic battles in Scotland. Under their manager Bill Struth, Rangers became the top-dogs, winning title after title and the myth of the superiority of Protestant Rangers grew. "We Are The People" was the Rangers' mantra and the fans happily followed their leader, Struth to triumph after triumph.
Ra Peepul operated a kind of closed shop - Roman Catholics found it well-nigh impossible to get jobs in certain large manufacturing companies in West-Central Scotland. Yes, some got in - at the lowest level - the tradesmen in many of these companies were 100% Protestant, often members of the Orange Order of the Masons;
Rangers certainly operated such a closed shop, "Na Papes" was the rule at Ibrox.
Support for Rangers wasn't compulsory, but, it helped in a good few firms. However, as the years passed, and the 1950s became the 1960s and 1970s, Scotland's manufacturing base withered and the sons and grandsons of Ra Peepul found their old economic base crumbling beneath them. They had supported the Scottish Unionist Party, which, in the early 1950s, was Scotland's strongest political party. But, the Unionists became the Scottih Conservative and Unionist Party - a sub-sect of the English Conservative Party, and the men in the London political bubble had no knowledge of and time for that small, far-off country, Scotland, and its particular religious and political nuances.
But the Roman Catholics who supported Celtic, they had obtained a power base in local government and in the Labour Party. Suddenly, as Scotland became a nation dependant on the public sector for jobs and riches,they were perceived to be the masters.
This didn't affect Ra Peepul too-much on Saturdays. Yes, Celtic, having recruited a Protestant genius named Jock Stein, had a decade and a half of ascendancy, while there was a brief flowering of opposition from the North East, as Aberdeen, under another Protestant genius named Alex Ferguson - who might have led Ra Peepul, had he not married a Roman Catholic.
But, in 1986 Rangers found a saviour, an exiled Scot named Graeme Souness came home to restore Ra Peepul to their rightful place. He persuaded one of his friends, a young, millionaire business man named David Murray, to buy Rangers and, with a flourish of Murray's cheque book - Rangers and Ra Peepul, were dominant again.
However, like yon ancient Greek fellow, Murray flew too-close to the sun in a vain pursuit of European glory. He promised to spend £10 for every £5 Celtic spent in the pursuit of domestic dominance.
But, Celtic found a new hero, a wee man wearing a bunnet - who was originally mocked and reviled by his own club's followers, for his insistence on financial prudence, on building a legacy, of not over-stretching.
Fergus McCann turned his club around, while Murray's profligacy went unchecked - until his model was unfundable, whereupon Rangers fell into the hands of a ruthless asset-stripped, who ran it into insolvency and engineered its sale to someone who wasn't a Rangers Man, didn't realise perhaps what he had bought and certainly didn't carry Ra Peepul with him.
Today, Rangers are no more. Mr Green, the owner of the remnants, is seeking to rebuild the tainted Rangers brand. He needs Ra Peepul to buy into his vision. But, Ra Peepul are not convinced that he has the money to meet their expectations; they do not see him as a true believer, merely someone out to make a fast buck at the expense of the club which they hold so dear - but not dear enough to put their own money into.
They are wandering, lost in the wilderness - seeking, with growing anxiety, the arrival of the Messiah, the one who will lead them back to what they see as their rightful position of domination over Scottish Football.
And the moral of today's sermon is. Peepul, you have for too-long followed false prophets; you have failed to heed the lessons of evolution. Your team model was not fit for survival, it had to die.
This is not 2012, for you, this is Year Zero - you have to start again and rebuild. If you are indeed to be the inheritors of what those four Gallant Pioneers who alighted on Glasgow Green built - like them you have to organise, start small and by your own efforts, build another great club. But, you have to take up the struggle - there are no longer any altruistic money men who will do it for you. And if you do not, then your lives are going to be very empty in the years ahead.
The rest of Scottish football does not want you to rebuild in the old style and to carry-on in the old ways. You have to go back to the beginning, start small and build from there, without arrogance, without pride in the past - be proud of what you build from now on, be all-embracing, have no discrimination in your club and show humility.
Who knows, by the time the 150th anniversary of the day those four Gallant Pioneers formed their club, a new "Rangers" might again be topping the Scottish League and once again you can claim: "We Are The People", without upsetting so-many when you make that claim.
Are enough of you up for that lengthy battle?
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