WELL, it has finally happened. Rangers are back in the Premiership - or - Sevco have finally made it into the top flight in Scotland. Please select your stance.
I have long been calling the team, wearing royal blue shirts, white shorts and black stockings with red tops: "The Rangers Tribute Act". There is a simple reason for this. Just as there are middle-aged people who will spend good money going out of an evening to see ABBA or Beatles tribute bands, or "tributes to Neil Diamond/Robbie Williams/Rod Stewart/Queen", or whoever - then there are people who wish to congregate every second Saturday at a large ground in south-west Glasgow, to try to convince themselves that: "They are THE People" - the Protestant Uberclass who are the backbone of Scotland. Mark Warburton's team meets that need.
The fact that their vision of Scotland vanished somewhere around the time Jimmy Reid demanded: "There will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying", is rather lost on them.
Scotland has moved on - everywhere except Ibrox Stadium, where you should still set your watch to 1690 before taking a seat in some quarters. Scotland has also failed to move-on across town at Celtic Park, where some of the regulars still set their watch to 1916, rather than 2016.
Fifty years, one hundred years from now, as perhaps "Rangers" celebrate their 100th Scottish League title, you can bet, Sean South XIV, from Croy, will be posting on the online Daily Record: "Youse is deid, youse deided back in 2012, youse hivnae won 100 titles - the first 54 were won by the auld team whit died, and oanywey, youse cheated tae win some o' them wi your EBTs".
Below this post, Billy King from Larkhall will have replied: "Shut yer face Tim, youse is jist beilin because Rangers is the greatest, maist-successful team ever - No Surrender". Scotland's secret shame it isn't. It's a shame, but, it is no secret.
Suffice to say, well done Mr Warburton, your backroom staff and, more-importantly, your players - your success has made a lot of people very happy.
Mark Warburton's success has pleased a lot of people
NOW the hard work really starts for the team manager. He has said all the right things, about mounting a title challenge in the new season, when it comes. He is unafraid about facing Celtic in th Scottish Cup semi-final.
Ra Peepul need to hear this. Otherwise sensible Rangers fans I know have spent the past four years telling me: "We were shafted; we did nothing wrong; it was all Craig Whyte's fault and THEY were out to get us".
They, of course, are all Celtic supporters and sympathisers, jealous of Rangers' success over so-many years. These guys believe normal service will soon be resumed - ie, the league flag will be hoisted over Ibrox come August 2017.
I am not so sure. Yes, Mr Warburton has done well in his season in charge. His team has won the Championship by a distance, but, will his team be good enough to thrive in the choppier waters of the Premiership? That is the big question.
There can be no doubt, some of the players currently at Murray Park will do well upstairs, but, others will have to be replaced. For me, the key question around the club is not in the competence of Warburton, Davie Weir and the playing staff; it concerns the spivs and chancers in the board-room.
For me, David Cunningham King comes across as the glib and shameless liar he was branded by yon South African judge. He has talked a good game - or, more-likely, had his dictation taken-down correctly by the stenographers in the mainstream media. He could promise the earth in the Championship - in the Premiership, he has to deliver. Can he? Will he?
Anyone who thinks we will revert to the usual situation, whereby the title race is a two-horse one, needs to take a reality check. The current Celtic team is a poor one; the team going up is, by the standards of great Rangers teams of the past - a poor one.
The fact, the SPFL title race is on-going going into the post-split fixtures indicates, Aberdeen at least are still in with a chance. Armageddon has not happened. Much depends on how well Warburton recruits, or is allowed to recruit, in the close season.
It is not a given that the 2016-17 Ibrox/Murray Park squad will be good enough to make this season's largely two-horse race into even a three-horse one in the new season. It might even be a four-horse one, should Hearts kick-on from where they currently are.
Such a scenario could only be good for Scottish football. I for one sincerely hope normal service will not be resumed next season and the Scottish League does not revert to being a two-team show.
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